


Last Man Standing

by Guede



Category: Men's Football RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gangsters, Alternate Universe - Prohibition Era, Amorality, Betrayal, Bondage, Car Sex, Crack Treated Seriously, Dom/sub Undertones, Drunkenness, Enemies to Lovers, F/M, Humor, M/M, Open Marriage, Pasta, Polyamory, Semi-Public Sex, Temperature Play, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-01
Updated: 2019-01-01
Packaged: 2019-10-02 00:05:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 72,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17253896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Guede/pseuds/Guede
Summary: Bootleg liquor, jazz clubs, the tommy-gun and two rival gangs.  Zlatan knows a good opportunity when he sees one.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This Alternate World Prohibition New York City is more _flavorful_ than truly historical, and mainly relies on _Paddy Whacked_ by T. J. English as a reference.

Father Figo was in fine form today, pontificating about leaving vengeance to the Lord with terribly eloquent turns of phrase and some nicely-timed dramatic booming that had all the ladies barely hanging onto their purses when they weren’t trying to hide their lolling tongues behind lacy handkerchiefs. He was just a little too good-looking for somebody whose job was to discourage sinful thoughts and deeds, but he was dedicated. Sunday after Sunday, he’d go up there and plead till the sweat was running off his chin onto the Bible beneath his hands for his flock to be kind to each other and abstain from the deadly sins, and Sunday after Sunday they all listened in dead silence before trotting off to their illicit affairs and wild parties and speakeasy adventures.

Zlatan looked at his pocket-watch, then sighed and leaned forward to grab the pew before him. He tipped over just a little too far as he got up, causing a stir in the outrageously feathered hats that filled the row, and then muttered his way out into the aisle. Near the end he tripped over somebody’s umbrella and the scuffle of his shoes on the stone floor attracted more attention—Figo tossed off a sarcastic line about the consequences of turning one’s back on heavenly retribution—but Zlatan merely rolled his shoulders beneath his brand-new London-import suit and strolled off towards the doors. He wouldn’t even have wasted the time if Van Basten hadn’t been such a bastard about propriety, and him taking his goddamn fuck of the week to a gala dinner with the Mayor the other night. But hell, it was New York. Long as nobody tried to _legalize_ an immorality, everyone just shut up and looked the other way.

Further down in the very front rows, the lines of somber black suits also rippled and Zlatan glimpsed a few heads there turning. He ignored them till he’d gotten to the door, then glanced over a shoulder and caught Nesta slinking down the wall after him, which made him grin. Once he was out of the nave, he took up a position near the door and idly whacked his fedora against his thigh to get out the little dents squeezing himself into those cattle-yard rows had made in it.

It didn’t take too long for Nesta and surprise, surprise, Gattuso to come into the antechamber, eyes blazing and hands hanging tensely by their sides. The lines of their suits were conservative—that was, a bit looser than the sleek numbers they normally lounged about town in, but still fitted enough for Zlatan to figure they hadn’t dared bring any guns into church. “Lovely morning, isn’t it? Except for your faces. What’s the matter, misplace something? Somebody?”

“Misplace something? You taunting—” Gattuso immediately lunged, his eyes popping out enough for Zlatan to have hung a bent money-clip from them.

Nesta had his own little enraged face-spasm, but hung back and held Gattuso back as well. “We’re not about to pollute a cathedral with your filthy blood,” he said. “But I suggest you enjoy this moment of sanctuary, because the next time I see you—”

“Not if I see you first. Bye.” With a snap of his fingers, Zlatan dismissed them and flipped his hat onto his head. He couldn’t help but snicker as the outraged noises started up behind him, but they soon faded away as he clipped down the church steps. Apparently Nesta wasn’t interested in starting anything in broad daylight.

Good for him: he still was keeping his head, even if the rest of the Italians had already started going to pieces after Paolo Maldini had disappeared two days ago on his way to buy a Parma ham at the corner butcher’s. Maldini was their strategist, and more importantly, the one with political connections. Without him, they could retaliate all they wanted, but just once and then they were stuck in jail. Or dead, which was always a pity given those very, very nice suits. Where they got them was a favorite bar-side topic of conversation, since nothing in New York’s or London’s finest could match them.

Zlatan nodded to the policeman on the corner, who pretended he had no idea who’d come round with last week’s precinct payoff, and continued on down the street for about fifteen minutes. He sped up a bit as he approached a grocery store with a fruit truck parked before it, then deftly ducked and weaved his way through the men hauling crates of apples from the truck-bed. The last time he dropped his head, he kept it down as he turned into the store.

No customers were inside, but nevertheless Zlatan stayed hunched over till he was too far in to be seen from the front windows. He snagged an apple off a display and went into the back, then clattered down a rickety stepladder into the damp basement, where he turned again to the left. Against the wall was a stack of crates that looked solidly filled, but were really just stuffed with artistically painted bags of cotton. He got them shoved aside in a few seconds, opened up the door behind them, and passed into the basement of the neighboring building, which in the first floor housed a respectable flower shop.

“Late,” Van der Vaart said, making a face that would’ve scared a prune. He was in a chair tipped onto its back two legs and on one side of him was a large puddle of dirty water. On the other was a grimy, scarred door. “Take off that idiotic hat. You’re not on your way out, I am.”

Zlatan went for the door, rubbing down his apple against his shirtfront. He held out his hand for the key, which Van der Vaart grudgingly handed over, and then unlocked the door and pulled it open. As he did, he tipped his head so his hat dropped into the other man’s lap; Van der Vaart flapped at it like a girl with a spider, then swore as his chair began to tip over. He also usefully knocked the hat back in the air so Zlatan could grab it on his way in. “Well, get going if you’re so bored.”

“Zlatan, you _bastard_.” The chair clattered like mad, but unfortunately it sounded like Rafael had missed the puddle.

Well, next time, Zlatan thought, and turned his attention to the man in the room. For somebody who’d spent two days in a room normally used to store potting soil, Maldini didn’t look too bad. He stared back blank-faced, standing there with such graceful poise that he almost looked comfortable with his hands chained to an overhead pipe. His shirt-tails were out and his collar open, and also his left sleeve was ripped past the elbow so what appeared to be a tattoo was visible and he had a few dirty streaks here and there, but otherwise he seemed fine. Even the sickly yellow light from the bare bulb mounted on the left wall didn’t wash out the green of his eyes too much.

“What are you doing in there? I don’t think we’re supposed to—” Van der Vaart scrambled to his feet, then let out an outraged squawk as Zlatan back-kicked the door shut, right in his face. The rest of whatever he said was in Dutch, which made it easier to ignore.

“It’s daytime and Mass is almost done. You don’t think he might bang on something when there are customers upstairs?” Zlatan called back.

Maldini’s eyebrows moved slightly. He looked up, revealing that he did have a few wicked bruises on his jaw and one at the right side of his face that merged into his hair.

“Which, if you didn’t think of it before, I wouldn’t try now.” Zlatan stuffed the key into his back-pocket and began to lean against the door. Then he had a thought and turned around to check that first. He made a face at its condition before stripping off his suit-jacket to hang on a hook on the wall with his hat. Then he leaned back; his shirt was much cheaper than the jacket. “Rafael, would you just fuck off already? _You’re_ going to get him found.”

The racket on the other side of the door finally died off, and then came the sweet sound of Van der Vaart stomping off. Shaking his head, Zlatan pulled out a pocketknife and began to cut a slice off the apple. But the apple was so ripe that he had to stop after the first cut and suck the beads of juice off his thumb and forefinger.

Maldini’s eyes drifted from the ceiling to Zlatan, then slightly to the right. “I haven’t been able to feel my hands for several hours, actually. I don’t think I could do that.”

His voice was on the raspy side, but Zlatan could still tell that normally it’d be oddly light and lilting for somebody with Maldini’s presence. “Seems like your mouth works well enough. It’s kind of interesting you aren’t gagged.”

“Then it’d be difficult for me to answer questions. Or so your employers apparently hoped.” And Maldini’s English was all right, with the pauses and slow intonation done out of deliberation. He shrugged, then winced very prettily. “I’m not interested in a violent outcome to this, by the way.”

“Oh, that’s a shame. I think those are more fun,” Zlatan said, switching to Italian. He made the second cut to free his apple slice, then looked up into the remnants of Maldini’s startled look. Zlatan grinned and put half the slice in his mouth, then bit slowly down.

Maldini controlled himself very well, but he couldn’t keep his pupils from widening a little. He probably hadn’t gotten anything to eat in a while, and he definitely sounded like he hadn’t had anything to drink. “I suppose if you’re not directly involved, it would be,” he carefully replied, also in Italian.

“No, if I’m not involved, then it’s really boring. I’m just standing around not doing anything.” Zlatan popped the rest of the apple bit in his mouth and took his time chewing it as he began to cut out another chunk. Then he frowned as he noticed a trickle of juice running down his arm into his cuff. He shifted the knife to the same hand that was holding the apple, licked his other hand clean, and then undid his cuff-links and rolled up his sleeves.

When he put the cuff-links in his pocket, he pushed himself off the door and forward about a foot. The room was small enough so that that put him about halfway to Maldini, who Zlatan caught staring at the apple again in the shiny surface of the knife-blade. Though when Zlatan looked up, Maldini’s eyes were resting thoughtfully on him.

“Where’d you learn your Italian? It’s very good,” Maldini said. Near the end he ran out of spit or something and his voice dried out. He turned his head and coughed into his arm, making the chains rattle a little.

Zlatan broke off the apple chunk with a quick twist of his wrist. He was lifting it to his mouth when he spotted the seed in it, which he then flicked out with his thumbnail. But the little black thing dropped like a fucking rock right onto his shoes, which wasted the dollar shoe-shine he’d gotten for church. He made a face and scuffed his foot till the seed fell off. “I’m not really sure why you’re so interested.”

“Well, I seem to have little else right now to do. Why not make some conversation?” Maldini dryly replied. Literally again, as he had to stop and swallow in the middle, and then at the end his tongue flicked out over his lower lip. “Anyway, you’re an interesting person. I’ve been wondering a few things since you showed up here.”

“Aw, thanks. That means so much to me, coming from a legend like you,” Zlatan drawled. The appleseed bounced towards Maldini’s foot and Zlatan stuck out his own, then toed the seed off to the side. Then he looked up and lifted the apple chunk to his mouth at the same time so it nearly glided up Maldini’s front. He nibbled off a corner. “I visited Italy a few times. It’s nice. Lots of sun. Kind of hard to get a date without the father trying to kill you, though.”

Maldini’s cool eyes took their time assessing Zlatan’s expression. “We like people to show respect for us and our traditions. But I’m sorry if a misunderstanding ruined your time there…maybe I could explain it to you?”

“Maybe.” Zlatan nibbled more of the apple. “To be honest, I’m kind of curious too. I keep dropping you all in the river and it’s a little weird not to know about who I’m killing.”

That made Maldini pause; he needed a moment to crush down whatever had wanted to light up his eyes. Then he shrugged again, and followed that up with what looked like a genuine wince. He rose up on his toes and tried to roll his shoulders before falling back with a tired hiss. “So you aren’t a mercenary?”

“No, I am. Highest bidder and all that. I’ve just never been to New York before,” Zlatan said, looking up. It was actually a pretty complicated deal holding Maldini’s arms up, with a long piece of chain looped through the handcuffs on his wrists. The padlock alone looked like somebody had stolen it from a historical museum. “Not really sure what the…traditions…here are. I just do what they tell me.”

“You like working like that?” Maldini asked. He was staring up too, biting his lip a bit as he tried to rub a fingertip beneath one of the cuffs. The skin of his wrists looked raw and red, and when his voice trailed off this time, it sounded just as scraped.

Zlatan reached up and pushed Maldini’s hands apart, then kept hold of Maldini’s left hand as he stepped in, the knife and apple just holding their faces apart. “What’s it to you how I like working?”

“Well, I do hate seeing people suffer from…” Maldini coughed again, hurriedly wrenching his head aside so it wouldn’t be in Zlatan’s face. The folds of his shirt whispered forward to brush over Zlatan’s belly like teasing fingertips.

He’d turned towards the piece of apple Zlatan was holding between forefinger and thumb, with the top of his head now pushing towards Zlatan’s mouth. Zlatan shifted the pocketknife so he could fold in the blade with his palm, then wedged it behind the apple. He waited till Maldini was starting to lean back before pressing the apple chunk to the other man’s mouth.

Maldini’s lips were slack at first, but then slowly lapped over the chunk to take it in, briefly touching Zlatan’s fingers. His teeth grazed against the ball of Zlatan’s thumb, and then he stood back as best he could to chew, slow and careful, his cheeks barely moving as he looked at Zlatan.

“Thank you,” he said after swallowing. His fingers curled over Zlatan’s hand, then lingered as Zlatan pulled his arm down. “It’s been a while.”

“Yeah?” Zlatan flicked the knife-blade back out and carved off another slice, then tucked the pocketknife into his sleeve. He bit off the very corner of the slice, then held it towards Maldini. “Want another?”

After a long moment, Maldini silently bent forward and took that piece in his mouth as well. He ate it just like the first, eyes fixed on Zlatan as his Adam’s apple slid up and down with each swallow. “I used to be friends with Van Basten, actually. He wasn’t so terribly strict about fraternization back then, but he did always like to get his way.” His tongue slipped over his lower lip, then twisted back into his mouth so Zlatan got a flash of its pink underside. “He threw fits if things didn’t go as he wanted.”

“He’s like that now. The other day Van Nistelrooy sent a cable that he was going to stay upstate an extra day for personal reasons and Van Basten told him not to come back at all,” Zlatan muttered, biting into the apple. Nearly all of it was gone now, and it only took a moment to eat the rest.

Maldini didn’t look as the core flew over his shoulder. “Van Nistelrooy’s not coming back? Is that the sort of thing you should be telling me, or are you just that sure of yourself with Van Basten?”

“Actually I think he’s a shit with a stick up his ass, and I thought we were talking.” Zlatan looked at his wet fingers, then held them up between him and Maldini. “Did you want any of the juice? You sound like you could use it, if we’re going to keep on like this.”

“I suppose I wouldn’t mind,” Maldini said. His quirked brows somewhat undercut his unconcerned tone. And then he had half of Zlatan’s thumb in his warm mouth, his long lashes coming down to half-mast as his tongue carefully probed through every wrinkle on the knuckle and then under the nail as well.

Zlatan bit the inside of his mouth to keep a straight face. “Nice of you to think about me, by the way. Is that traditional?”

Maldini languidly pulled off Zlatan’s thumb, but remained slung forward so he was nearly kissing Zlatan’s jaw. “Well, for me it is. I prefer taking into consideration other people’s wants. It usually tends to bring out the best in them.”

“Really?” Zlatan murmured, sliding a hand around Maldini’s jaw. He noted when the other man had to fight down a wince and pressed harder at those bruises, forcing Maldini’s head back. Then he brought up his other hand and dropped it about Maldini’s throat to watch those eyes widen. “Nobody never just takes the gift and runs with it?”

“It happens.” It was impressive how calm Maldini still managed to sound. “Hopefully I have the chance first to explain how it can turn into a stream of gifts.”

Zlatan stared at him, keeping the emotion out of his face. A little bit of sweat collecting at Maldini’s temple slowly formed a droplet, which teetered at his cheekbone before finally sliding down to Zlatan’s forefinger. Which Zlatan curled as if to wipe it away, but at the last moment he twisted his head and kissed Maldini instead.

Not bad, and once Maldini got over his moment of surprise, was starting to promise to be a lot better, but Zlatan couldn’t help pulling back. “Like that?”

“We can certainly talk about it,” Maldini graciously said, and then latched back onto Zlatan’s mouth with startling speed.

And this time it was damn good: the man definitely knew what to do with a chance when he got one. He groaned the moment Zlatan’s tongue brushed his mouth, the sound alone nearly sucking that in as Maldini slumped into Zlatan, letting Zlatan’s hands twist up his head by the hair. His tongue teasingly swept over the top line of Zlatan’s teeth, then immediately yielded as Zlatan chased it back into his own mouth.

But his elbows were bumping into Zlatan’s head in an irritating way, and Zlatan almost reached up to steady them before recollecting why those were there in the first place. Instead he pulled his fingers out of Maldini’s hair, then dropped his hands and brought up back up beneath Maldini’s shirt to grab his waist. From the way Maldini twisted, he had more than a couple bruises hidden there, but he seemed to like getting them petted. Well enough to stick his tongue back in Zlatan’s mouth, anyway, and then to make a protesting noise when Zlatan moved his hands up and around to Maldini’s back.

The chains were still clanking madly, and Zlatan was just beginning to think it’d be worth getting Maldini down now to make that stop when suddenly he heard the door-lock clicking. Maldini heard too and stiffened, then jammed his knee hard into Zlatan’s leg. He tried to say something as well, but Zlatan was a little too busy lunging for the door to hear it.

“Ibra, what the fuck is going—”

Zlatan grabbed the edge of the door and jerked it so Van der Vaart stumbled, then whammed it shut. It hit something on the way that cursed and made a loud thud when it hit the floor. Where Zlatan already was, his pocketknife dropping into his hand as he scooted about to the other side of the door.

Whoever else was with Van der Vaart—of course the son of a bitch wouldn’t come alone—kicked open the door. The moment his leg was through, Zlatan slammed the knife into his calf and then lunged up to grab the gun the moron was waving about. He jerked it up and to the side just before it went off, then whacked the man’s wrist against the wall till the gun fell into his palm. Then he shot him in the head.

A quick look outside showed that Van der Vaart was out cold, and since Zlatan didn’t want to waste any bullets this early, he left it like that and spun around.

That first shot had hit the pipe and partly broken it so water was coming down in floods from the joint, which meant a hell of a lot of people were going to notice very soon what had happened. Maldini, however, had avoided the initial blast by grabbing the chain and somehow swinging himself up into an impressive upside-down crouch against the ceiling. He couldn’t hold it and fell just as Zlatan saw—his arms had to be almost too stiff to move—but the whole thing did have the effect of completely breaking the pipe. The chain slid down it and off the end, Maldini got a bit of a shower, and Zlatan just gave up on saving his suit.

He grunted as Maldini’s weight hit his arms, then tossed the other man a bit to get him settled in a better position. Then he carried Maldini out of the room and over the two bodies while Maldini was still busy staring wide-eyed at him. No wonder the man was the strategist, acrobatics aside.

“You know, I always thought that tradition was for man and wife, wherever you were,” Zlatan said, dropping Maldini on his feet. He checked the dead man for extra bullet clips, then headed off towards the sewer exit.

“It is, but the intervention’s greatly appreciated.” Maldini was a bit slow to follow, but that was mostly because he was trying to wrap up the chain around one arm. Once he had that done, he was up beside Zlatan in an instant. “Can I borrow—”

The back of Zlatan’s neck prickled and he immediately yanked them down behind a pile of terracotta pots, which shattered a bare second later from a flurry of gunshots. Zlatan shot back twice, without looking, and then shoved them on as cries of pain filled the air behind them. Something cut at the back of his ear and he reached up, then irritably threw away that shard of terracotta. “No. I need this gun. Get your own.”

“From where?” Maldini said, finally betraying some annoyance of his own.

Zlatan rolled his eyes and kept pushing them along till they got to the trapdoor. It was padlocked, but that blew apart nicely from one shot. They got down into it a split second before another group pounded down the stairs, yelling about who was going to call Van Basten and tell him the Swede had lost it again.

“Oh, now they listen to me,” Zlatan muttered. He caught Maldini looking at him and shrugged as he jammed down the trapdoor. Then he grabbed the chain so Maldini fell into him. “I _told_ them I’m Swedish but they kept calling me the Slav because of my—”

The arm Maldini hooked over Zlatan’s neck made sense, since it helped him get back on his feet, but then using it to hold Zlatan down while trying to touch the back of Zlatan’s throat with a tongue-tip seemed a little more nonsensical. Even if it was really fun.

Maldini jumped back at the gunshot, then blinked furiously as Zlatan pulled the broken chain from around his arm and handcuffs. “What—oh. Is that going to hold for long enough?”

“Well, I think it’ll work better than you kissing me in the middle of a firefight. I can’t believe you thought that was what I was asking for, by the way. What kind of mercenary do you think I am?” Zlatan said, quickly wrapping the chain about the trapdoor handle and the topmost ladder rung. He knotted the ends off as tightly as he could, then sprang back as he heard somebody cocking a tommy-gun.

When Zlatan grabbed his arm this time, Maldini wisely didn’t take it the same way and instead ran with him. The other man did look a bit peeved, but with the racket behind them he didn’t get a chance to complain.

Zlatan figured everybody had come running from the car repair garage a block down, so he headed that way. He was proved right when he popped that trapdoor and the only man left, Khalid, started to ask him what was going on. For an answer, Zlatan backhanded him into the nearest car, then dug about in his pockets till he’d found the keys to a car that wasn’t in pieces. Then he hopped onto the running-board, only to find Maldini sitting in the driver’s seat and trying to apply a pair of cable-cutters to his handcuffs.

“Oh, that can wait. My God, do you want to get rescued or not? It’s not like this is what I like doing.” After tossing the cutters, Zlatan shoved Maldini over and jammed himself into the seat.

Maldini used the dashboard to help pull himself up, then added a little annoyed toss of his nice brown curls. “Carrying people over thresholds aside?”

“I think you liked that, Maldini,” Zlatan said after a moment. He jammed the key in the ignition, then whacked the car into gear. Then he reached over, hooked the chain of Maldini’s handcuffs, and dragged the other man across to pin him up against the wheel. He let out a muffled laugh when it didn’t even take a second for Maldini to stop posturing and start kissing back. “Besides, you look good in cuffs. I was sort of hoping we’d get to do more with that before they all interrupted.”

Maldini looked at him. Then something exploded behind and beside Zlatan, making him jerk down so his head smacked into Maldini’s chin. He cursed and began to push the other man aside, but his elbow hit something. Zlatan turned and looked at the shotgun Maldini had balanced over the top right of the driver’s seat, then twisted farther to see the corpse.

“I’ll trade you this for the pistol,” Maldini dryly said. “And call me Paolo.”

Zlatan grinned, kissed his cheek, and then stomped down on the accelerator while ripping the steering wheel around so Paolo fell off his lap. “Nah, you keep that. I have to drive.”

Sunday afternoon meant there wasn’t a lot of traffic on the roads, but that didn’t really work in their favor since it was harder to inconspicuously race off out of sight. One thing Zlatan had to give Van Basten credit for was the lightning-quick alert system of snitches and lookouts he’d set up, which pretty much meant no stopping anywhere for five miles around.

Past that they were in territory where the fuzz wasn’t exclusively in Van Basten’s pocket, but New York City was far from a closed town and driving around with a shattered back window was bound to attract some unwanted attention. So Zlatan kept on going till he’d reached one of the few areas where there were plenty of people going about their business on a Sunday afternoon. He was known in the neighborhood, so he slowed down and drove carefully into the first car repair shop he saw. The proprietor was dealing with what looked like a rabbi, but he immediately caught Zlatan’s eye and signaled that he’d be over right afterwards. In the meantime, a couple men had already descended on the car and were checking out the rear windshield.

“Never mind that, just get to breaking it down. You can keep everything that the factory didn’t send this baby out with,” Zlatan said to them. He opened the door and tossed the keys to one of them, then ducked back inside to rifle the glove compartment and the backseat. But all that yielded him was a cheap-looking hip flask, pinks and one daffodil yellow glove, so Zlatan finally got out of the car feeling rather annoyed. Usually he could count on somebody’s gambling winnings being left in the glovebox.

Paolo had already gotten out and was standing around gazing about the place, ignoring the way everyone was staring at him plus the shotgun. Actually, he looked a little green and was standing very, very still. “Jewish Quarter?”

“We can have an early dinner while they’re finding me a car.” Zlatan pulled out his pistol and unloaded it, then handed into the repair shop owner to assess. They haggled a bit before agreeing on a figure for both the gun and the car, and then talked some about the price of wine before the other man finally let Zlatan take Paolo into an empty back-office. “That’s the bathroom there, by the way. You look like you could use a moment to powder your nose.”

“I could’ve done without jumping every curb between here and there,” Paolo muttered, promptly disappearing into the bathroom.

After a moment, Zlatan shrugged and went into the office, which looked like somebody had either just moved out or hadn’t quite moved in yet. The only pieces of furniture were a battered desk that might’ve seen service in the Great War and the ripped-out backseat of…maybe a Cadillac. It was big and broad and, as Zlatan discovered when he flopped down on it, full of broken springs.

“Is there a phone I can use?” Paolo said, coming in. He set the shotgun down on the desk, then began to turn around.

At the same time Zlatan nudged the door shut with his foot. The sound seemed to alarm Paolo, since he first froze and then dropped his hands towards the shotgun. They stopped about an inch away from it, then slowly retreated. He began to roll his shoulders and massage his wrists around the cuffs.

“Yeah, but I wouldn’t unless you’re calling somewhere besides your house or Nesta’s house. Van Basten put taps on both last week.” Zlatan searched around in his pockets and found his keys—half of which weren’t going to be usable anywhere in the city by the end of the day, and God help whatever poor locksmith Dutch Schultz and Van Basten found to see to that. But the key-ring also had a piece of wire wrapped around it, which was what Zlatan was looking for; he unbent it, then jerked his head at Paolo. “C’mere for a second.”

Paolo put his hands down on the desk, right next to the shotgun, and looked dubiously at him. “For what reason?”

Brows arched, Zlatan swung his legs off the seat and straightened them out so he could look straight at Paolo. “Well, _now_ you’re all cold. And after I risked life and limb for you.”

“You seemed to have that risk nicely minimized,” Paolo said a bit stiffly. The tops of his cheekbones weren’t pinking, but they were on the verge. “And if you betrayed one employer, how do I know you won’t do the same—”

“Just to keep this all on the level, I’m currently _unemployed_ as we haven’t actually had that discussion yet. But since you bring it up…two thousand a week, a new wardrobe and Nesta sweetly apologizing for being a sourpussed asshole would be about right.” Zlatan stuffed his keys back in his pocket and twiddled the wire between his fingers.

Paolo raised his own eyebrows. “You’ve tossed five of our men in the harbor.”

“Six, actually. Take ‘em as my credentials,” Zlatan grinned. He shifted so he was resting both hands on the seat. “Okay, fine, Nesta doesn’t have to apologize. I’ll take a key to your house instead.”

Now Paolo was undeniably flushing, and if Zlatan wasn’t mistaken, his eyes had almost widened before he’d gotten control of himself. He pursed his lips, then thoughtlessly backed up against the desk when Zlatan abruptly shoved himself to his feet. “That’s out of the question.”

“Oh, I don’t want the _house_. Jesus, where would your wife and kids live?” Zlatan said, and crossed the space and grabbed Paolo’s wrists. He pulled them off the desk and downwards, and was actually ducking his head to look at them when Paolo’s mouth got in the way.

A couple minutes later, Paolo was proving once again that ignoring the verbal objection was the critical part. He nicked his tongue on Zlatan’s tooth at the clicking noise, then leaned back to frown at his suddenly-free right hand.

“Stop pushing at my dick and I can get your other one.” Zlatan mouthed his way down Paolo’s neck, not especially enjoying the gritty taste of the dust streaks on it, but he was developing a partiality for the way Paolo’s eyes went hazy and hot whenever he liked something. “You probably would’ve cut off your whole hand with those fucking cable-cutters.”

“Probably,” Paolo agreed, sounding a bit vague. He started to lift his arm, but then winced and pulled it to his side instead. “All the muscles in my arms are stiffer than stone.”

The other cuff-lock finally gave and Zlatan let it and the piece of wire drop to the floor. He wrapped his hands around Paolo’s left forearm and pressed in with his fingers as Paolo gasped and twisted, nudging repeatedly at the crook of Zlatan’s throat with his face. The flesh did feel as if it’d been turned to iron so Zlatan had to squeeze up and down the limb a few times before he finally felt some give. Then he started working his fingers along the muscles and Paolo hissed, then let out a slow sigh, his head settling on Zlatan’s shoulder. He grunted when Zlatan pulled them back towards the carseat, then dropped quite voluntarily to straddle Zlatan’s legs as Zlatan sat down.

“A thousand a week, with a onetime bonus of fifteen thousand for today. You can get a raise in six months when we’re sure you won’t sell us out.” Paolo put his head back on Zlatan’s shoulder, twisting a bit so Zlatan could keep massaging his arm. His other hand slipped between Zlatan’s legs and seemed to work pretty well, despite its unmassaged muscles. “Wardrobe’s on our account.”

“What about the key?” Zlatan initially had just meant to distract Paolo for a second with the arm-stroking, but now he was too fascinated by the way it was turning Paolo into a groaning slack bundle of silky curls and fantastic cheekbones and legs that would’ve done a Cotton Club girl proud.

As Paolo lifted his head, Zlatan pressed both thumbs up the underside of Paolo’s arm, continuing past the elbow, and the other man’s incredulous look suddenly dissolved into a long, low moan and a pretty arch of the back. Paolo’s hand ground into Zlatan’s growing erection with remarkable impatience, given his reputation for delivering vengeance years after the fact. “You’re serious about that?”

Zlatan nipped at Paolo’s ear a few times, then reluctantly tugged himself free of the hard kiss with which Paolo replied. He let go of Paolo’s arm and Paolo immediately pushed it down and back, slinging it around Zlatan as he climbed further onto the carseat. It started to get awkward, so Zlatan hauled them around to lie lengthwise on the seat before he began working on Paolo’s other arm. “Why not?”

Paolo looked at him, blinking. Then Zlatan got him by the waist and flipped him under, startling half an exclamation out of the other man. The other half more or less was eaten up by the frantic necking they did in the next few minutes; Zlatan gave up on Paolo’s right arm when it was clear Paolo would rather get to removing Zlatan’s trousers.

“It’s just an unusual request,” Paolo eventually said, digging his fingers into Zlatan’s shoulder and the top of the carseat. He breathed in and out very slowly, his head back so the tendons in his neck pressed themselves into Zlatan’s mouth.

Zlatan cursed the cheap oil, but his fingers were too far in now for him to get anything else, so he just kept sucking at Paolo’s neck and willed the other man to relax. It felt like nobody had bothered trying this out for a few years, maybe a decade or two, and _how_ people could be that stupid…well, their loss, Zlatan’s gain. “You’re kidding. When it barely takes anything to get you going?”

An irritated light began to burn behind the languid warmth blurring Paolo’s eyes. He raised his head to look straight at Zlatan. “Most people don’t presume so far as to—”

Fingers out, Paolo’s head thumping back. Zlatan’s cock in, Paolo not only shutting up but trying to make a new home for his tongue in Zlatan’s mouth again. Most people, as Zlatan had long since learned, were complete idiots. Because God, did Paolo feel good around him.

* * *

“Sorry we never got dinner. I’ll take you out sometime to make up for it,” Zlatan said. He turned off the ignition, then twisted around to get the shotgun out of the backseat.

Paolo was silent for a moment. “Generally you do dinner _first_.”

“Well, we already showed I don’t know how to act around here, didn’t we? I’m sure you’ll take great delight in fixing that. Hey, so would it be inappropriate to bring your wife flowers when I meet her? Because I know a florist who could use the business.” Shotgun in hand, Zlatan got out of the car and turned around.

And there was Nesta standing at the top of the stairs, a striking figure of outrage so intense his silhouette was vibrating like a harpstring against the yellow rectangle of the doorway. “You! You have the _balls_ \--”

“Sandro! Sandro, it’s fine! He’s with…” And there Paolo trailed off, apparently out of embarrassment for using the whole ride over to fix his hair instead of figuring out what to say. At least he kept moving so by the time Nesta and a few others had spilled into the driveway, he was standing between them and Zlatan. “He got me out,” Paolo finally finished. “He’s on our payroll now.”

Nesta seemed to gain a few pounds just from the indignation swelling in him. “What! Paolo, it’s _Ibrahimović_ \--”

“Oh, my God, Paolo! You’re all right!” “I’ve got to call Adriana, she’s been worried sick.” “I get to call Lippi!”

Zlatan stood back and grinned as Nesta slowly deflated before the sight of everyone else happily hugging and kissing Paolo. Even then Nesta seemed to want to keep glaring, but eventually people ran out of ways to ruffle Paolo’s hair and it began to be terribly uncomfortable for everyone but Zlatan. Then Nesta reluctantly pivoted on a heel and stalked towards Paolo, who briefly looked as if he wished he wasn’t too dignified to shove Gilardino between then. Paolo instead held out his arms. Nesta stepped slowly into them, and then suddenly he was squeezing Paolo so hard that the other man’s eyes actually bulged for a moment. Nesta buried his head in Paolo’s neck and made some muffled relieved noises, Paolo stroked his hair, and everyone else besides Zlatan stood around pretending they weren’t completely lapping it up with their eyes. He was honest about it and stared all he liked _because_ he liked it.

Then Zlatan decided to push off the car and somehow, even half-crawled into Paolo, Nesta noticed. The next moment, he was shoving his chin at Zlatan’s face and prodding Zlatan’s chest with a stiff finger. “And what is the reason, exactly, that you’d change sides just like that?”

Zlatan began to put his hand to his chin, like he was thinking about it, then abruptly stepped forward and slapped his arm around Nesta’s waist. He glimpsed Toni coming forward and tossed the shotgun at him to forestall that, then swung Nesta around in perfect three-four time as Nesta stumbled and cursed and basically looked like he wished his eyes were daggers he could headbutt into Zlatan’s face. “Because your side’s prettier, of course!”

He gave Nesta a good, hard smack right on the mouth—interestingly enough, Nesta froze up so Zlatan even got a good poke of the tongue between the man’s lips—before releasing him right into the path of Toni, who’d caught the shotgun and seemed to be thinking about using it. Then he let his momentum carry him up the steps and into the house.

Behind him a whole orchestra of angry Italian started up, with Paolo in lonely counterpoint trying to be soothing at full volume. He could’ve used a few lessons from Dizzy Gillespie there, but he was old enough to know what he was doing, and besides, he’d just come back from the almost-literal dead. He’d be fine, and good thing, since Zlatan had had his fill of the rescue routine for the day.

So Zlatan proceeded on to the kitchen in search of that much-delayed dinner. He made a wrong turn and was nearly run over by a half-dressed Inzaghi on his way to the Paolo welcome-party, which made Zlatan almost want to go back himself and revise his words to Nesta. But his stomach growled, so instead he closed his eyes and kept walking. Surprisingly enough, that actually got him straight to what smelled like a kitchen: garlic, olive oil, tomato and salt. And when Zlatan opened his eyes, he was staring at a beautiful bowl of pasta puttanesca. “God, that looks good.”

“Thanks, I’m sure it’s flattered,” somebody said. Two hands reached down and picked up the bowl.

The hands were attached to a pair of long arms, and the arms led to Gianluigi Buffon, who forked in his first mouthful while looking straight at Zlatan. Then he lowered his fork and flipped it around so he was holding it like a stabbing knife. Zlatan snorted and shook his head as he rounded the island counter to get at the stove, where the rest of the pasta was steaming in a saucepan. “I brought Maldini home and along the way we negotiated a very nice contract. So we’re working together now.”

“That’s nice.” Buffon resumed holding his fork like a fork, but he still kept eating while fixing that dead stare on Zlatan. He looked a little bit like a camel contemplating whether to bolt and abandon its rider in the middle of the Sahara. “That explains the racket, too.”

Zlatan found an empty bowl, filled it up, and then proceeded to unfilling it. “Why aren’t you out there? Aren’t you happy he’s back?”

“Of course I am. But Paolo’s been gone for two days, so he’ll want to call his wife and sons, shower, and then have some dinner. I believe he’ll finish the first two by the time I’m ready for dessert, so there’s no point in me moving,” Buffon said. He paused to wipe a fleck of sauce off the corner of his mouth. “Incidentally, the fact that you now are paid from the same source I am does not necessarily change our relations to each other.”

“You annoyed me before I even knew I could fuck around with you, too,” Zlatan genially replied. He quickly finished his pasta, then washed up his bowl and fork. Then he gave himself a quick once-over using one of the windows before heading for the back door.

Buffon cleared his throat. When that didn’t stop Zlatan, he sighed. And then he came around the island with remarkable speed, sliding before the doorway just before Zlatan could step through it. “Where are you going at this hour?”

“I didn’t have to tell you where I was going before Paolo hired me, and I don’t necessarily have to now.” Zlatan acted like he was going to push at Buffon’s arm, then quickly ducked and twisted out while the other man was bracing himself. “But hey, I’m feeling nice, so I’m just going to church. I had to miss part of Mass to save Paolo—well, you would’ve figured that out, right? Seems to be your hobby.”

Unlike Nesta, Buffon didn’t go into audible fits of rage that often, but Zlatan did hear a distinct grunt of irritation float after him. He laughed and strolled on, enjoying the brisk night air. It was good to be him.

* * *

Zlatan sank into a comfortable sprawl against the gargoyle, kicking his heels down to jam them tight against the tiles. He’d still have to get over a two-foot railing to fall entirely off the roof, but he figured it couldn’t hurt. “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.”

Luís stiffened in his seat against the next gargoyle over, where he liked to contemplate the cityscape and think of how glorious a creation of God man was. Or so he said; Zlatan privately figured this was the only spot where Luís could rant and curse without it instantly getting about the parish. Inside the cathedral there always seemed to be some needy young woman lurking around, looking for spiritual guidance.

“You’re not Catholic,” Luís finally said. He sounded cranky.

“My mother almost was. She even learned about the catechism and everything.” Hence why Zlatan was being careful, since priest’s collar or not, Figo was perfectly capable of cracking heads in defense of his church.

Sighing, Luís turned around and began to get up. “Judaism works like that, not Catholicism. Zlatan, I don’t think this—”

“Well, Paolo Maldini definitely is Catholic, and he’s probably going to need a couple more dispensations,” Zlatan said. He grinned at the way Luís skipped the shock and went straight to the exasperation.

“It doesn’t work like that either, though I wonder if the Church would be better off using that to attract more…oh, never mind. Maldini? So he’s fine?” It wasn’t till after Zlatan nodded that Luís sat back down, this time facing Zlatan. He rubbed at his face. “So you’ve switched sides?”

Zlatan nodded again, then shrugged his way off the gargoyle and leaned forward to rest his arms on his knees. “Yeah. Van Basten had the stupidest idea this time that kidnapping Maldini would either get him enough inside info to take out a bigwig like Lippi or Ancelotti, or that it’d hamstring the Italians for long enough to kill them off from the ground up. Which it did, but honestly. Nesta and Buffon alone could keep their heads long enough to take out Van Basten with them. Don’t know as anything would be left afterward, but…”

“Which is all very true and very good, but why is it that I can’t believe your switch is going to bring peace and quiet here?” Luís sighed.

“Because it’s not supposed to. You know that. You even helped come up with it all,” Zlatan said, frowning. “Geez, Father. Have a little faith.”

Luís stared. His mouth twitched. Then it smiled, and he dropped his head and laughed quietly into his hand. “All right, all right, you’re very clever, Zlatan. And you’re very practical but you’re not exactly cynical yet, so don’t think you can see everything coming. But anyway, how was it?”

“A…lot easier than I thought, actually,” Zlatan remarked. He raised his eyebrows and pulled at his knees, leaning backwards. “I think he just counts on that arched eyebrow of his to keep everyone from shoving him, since once you do that he doesn’t seem to know what to do, and then if you keep going, he gives in pretty quick and gets all worked—”

Now Luís had his head in his hands. “ _No_. Not that. How was switching sides during one of the most ruthless gang wars ever to…God forgive me, but I sound like one of those gossip-column reporters. Why is it so hard to be sensible around you?”

“No idea, but if you ever figure it out, don’t tell anybody. I’d lose my job.” Zlatan drummed his fingers against the tiles, then pushed himself up onto his feet. He slipped a bit and had to grab the gargoyle’s leg—Luís developed a twitch in his left eyebrow—to steady himself. Then he swung away, towards Luís, with his hands in his pockets. “See you on Sunday.”

All his protestations aside, Luís didn’t hesitate to envelop Zlatan in a bear-hug that actually posed something of a threat to Zlatan’s ribs. “Go with God, and stop killing my parishioners.”

Zlatan laughed his way off the roof.

* * *

When Zlatan returned to Paolo’s townhouse, a very stiff, poker-faced Nesta informed him that for the next two nights he’d be on distillery duty with Mauro. In other words, he’d be sitting in a damp, dark factory hidden near the docks watching a lot of steel tubs rumble while Camoranesi waited for an excuse to “accidentally” shoot him in the head.

“Where’s Paolo?” Zlatan asked.

Nesta jerked a thumb at behind him, then walked by Zlatan before Zlatan could look. He banged his shoulder into Zlatan’s chest and kept on going so Zlatan had to pivot in order to keep them from getting skewed into the wall. Then he looked, and rolled his eyes when he saw Camoranesi waiting in the doorway. The other man was doing up his tie and looking like he wished he could make that last all night, so Zlatan turned back only to find Nesta pulling on a snappy black overcoat that flared a little at his waist.

“Hey, Sandro—”

“The next time you call me that, I will make prosciutto out of your thighs. And Paolo is home with his family, so don’t even think of disturbing him,” Nesta said. His tone was remarkably flat, considering the threats he was making.

Zlatan sighed and picked at his nails. “Well, still. I don’t think that working for you means you get to stick somebody in the shower with me.”

Nesta had been reaching to get a hat off the door-side rack, but his hand suddenly jerked and instead he knocked a whole cluster of fedoras and trilbies to the ground. Behind Zlatan came a series of increasingly wheezy chokes. They stopped when Nesta twisted around and glared that way, but quietly began again when Nesta switched to glowering at Zlatan. “Just because your mind is perverted doesn’t mean you need to put your delusions on me. I didn’t say that.”

“No, you said to stick with Camoranesi for the next two nights, starting now. But I was just going up to take a shower and I do appreciate my privacy, so…” Zlatan said, pulling an innocently curious face.

For a moment it looked as if Nesta were going to lunge forward, but then he seemed to think the better of it. Maybe because then he would’ve had to trample over all those hats and that would’ve invited a flood of complaints from the rest of the group, and as much as Nesta liked serving out the complaints, he didn’t seem to enjoy receiving them.

In the end Nesta stomped around and out the door, the hem of his coat swishing about his feet. “Mauro, pick up the hats _while_ Zlatan is taking his shower. Then go show him around.”

“Thanks a lot,” Camoranesi muttered, sliding by Zlatan. “It’s going to be really fun dragging you around.”

Zlatan opened his mouth, then paused and mentally went through his kill list. After he was sure nobody was on it that Camoranesi cared about, he headed for the stairs. “Trust me, it will be.”

* * *

Hour one of Zlatan and Camoranesi’s shift at the factory was spent in tense silence as everyone else but the skeleton night crew went home. Hour two was distinguished mostly by the ten seconds Camoranesi spent trying to introduce Zlatan to the beat cop for that block with as few words as possible and the minute Zlatan needed to charm the man into a nice little discussion about the Dodgers. Unfortunately, that was cut short by Mauro’s pathetic attempt to imitate Nesta’s impatient huff.

“Relax, would you? It’s a long night and there’s nothing to do,” Zlatan said, claiming the one stool. It was plain steel with sharp unfiled edges and he knew about ten minutes later his ass would be sore as hell, but it already was worth it for the look at Camoranesi’s face.

After a moment, the other man glanced heavenward and walked off to the other side of the platform, which oversaw all the distilling vats. It also carried a little office, but that was locked down since it had the money safe inside, and the day manager had taken the key with him. Not that, Zlatan thought as he critically studied the lock, that would really be much of an issue, but it was a bit early yet to be playing that hard with Camoranesi.

There was a distant clatter and Zlatan stiffened, but Camoranesi nearly jumped off the platform, his hand darting towards the inside of his coat. Then he put both hands on the railing and stared down at the ground floor. “What was that?”

Zlatan looked up, towards the noise, and spotted a dark flapping thing. “Hell, just a bird or a bat or something. Calm _down_. You keep up like that, you’ll have a heart attack before you’re old enough to shave.”

Camoranesi stiffened, then slowly turned to stare at Zlatan. “I’m older than you.”

“And you’ll definitely look it if you don’t learn not to be so nervous. You do know if you shoot something in here you might set the whole place on fire, right? Seeing as it’s filled with grain alcohol?” Zlatan lightly replied. He still had a few knives, but Nesta hadn’t let him take a pistol with him “since it was just baby-sitting duty” and surely Zlatan didn’t need to risk the temptation to do something idiotic.

To which Zlatan would’ve replied in hearty fashion if Buffon hadn’t come out right then to tell Nesta the taps were off the phones. Nesta had immediately vanished to catch up on business calls and all that’d been left had been Camoranesi with an expression very similar to the one he was wearing now, looking as if he wanted to twist Zlatan’s nose off his face.

“This is the one of the largest bootleg distilleries in the country,” Camoranesi said. He pronounced his word very distinctly and slowly, as if Zlatan were a particularly slow child. “If something were to happen to it, it’d be a disaster big enough to sink us.”

“Are you trying to say something?” Zlatan asked, eyebrows raised.

The color in Camoranesi’s face heightened a touch. He started to reply, but abruptly turned with raised hand, as if he just didn’t think it was worth it. “I’m going downstairs to see what that was. You stay here. If you leave, I’ll tell Nesta.”

“‘If you leave, I’ll tell Nesta,’” Zlatan sing-songed. Then he slouched so his head rested on the office wall, watching Camoranesi trip down the stairs and hoping the shit tripped and broke his neck. He really should’ve held out for the two thousand a week, since otherwise he wasn’t getting paid enough to put up with this sort of bullshit. “Come on! I’m just asking if you got a warning or something, like you’re going to be raided tonight! We’re working together! You should tell me these things! Instead of running to Mother Nesta!”

And _that_ was an amusing image if Zlatan had ever thought of one, going some way towards reviving his good humor. Sadly, Camoranesi didn’t seem to think so, but instead sped up.

Well, his loss, Zlatan thought, and then Zlatan quietly slid off his stool and down by the door. In a few seconds, he had it open and had slipped inside.

The gleaming door of the safe was the most visible object in the dark room, but Zlatan ignored it and crawled over to the desk instead. After a bit of careful poking about, he found a shotgun strapped to the underside and a semiautomatic pistol in one of the drawers. A little more searching turned up the ammunition, and he was in the middle of sorting by weight for the best bullets when he heard a muffled thud.

Zlatan stopped, listening very hard. Then he quickly finished loading the guns: the pistol went into the back of his waistband, but he kept the shotgun tucked beneath his arm as he crept back out of the office.

Everything looked and sounded quiet, but nevertheless Zlatan opted to climb over the back-rail instead of take the stairs. He shimmied down till he was hanging by his fingertips to the edge, then swung himself and let go to land on the railing of a catwalk that wound through the vats. The metal pole groaned and he slipped a little before grabbing it with his hands—new shoes, lousy tread—but managed to steady himself without making too much noise. He paused a moment, listening again, and then he stuck the shotgun into the struts on the underside of the catwalk before dropping off it to the ground.

By then he was close enough to clearly hear the scuffling noises and the cursing, which was mostly by Camoranesi and unevenly stifled, as if somebody was trying to force something into his mouth. There should’ve been at least one distillery worker in sight, but he was missing; Zlatan suppressed a sigh, telling himself it’d be more amusing to poke at the Italians’ lousy hiring choices later, after he’d chased out the Dutch. He took the pistol out of his waistband and eased himself forward, mindful of the blurry reflections in the vat sides.

The two muscle-men holding Camoranesi by the arms Zlatan didn’t recognize, but their leader he certainly did. There still was a big hunk of machinery between him and them, but he couldn’t help beaming at the way Van der Vaart’s nose was all bruised and swollen.

“Where are the keys to the office?” Van der Vaart asked.

Camoranesi stone-wall stared him, then leaned forward as if about to say something. Van der Vaart stupidly leaned in as well and Camoranesi spit in his face. Which won him a little credit with Zlatan, but which wasn’t appreciated by the two thugs: the one on the left socked Camoranesi in the stomach, and then the one on the right put his hand on Camoranesi’s head as the other man doubled over. He shoved Camoranesi’s face into a barrel of something that made a wettish whispering noise—leftover mash from the vats. Zlatan wasn’t sure if eating that stuff would poison somebody, but from the way Camoranesi’s kicking was rapidly weakening, that might not even become a question.

He pulled the knife from his sleeve and tossed it at a bunch of crates about ten yards away; the blade hit the wood with a soft _thunk_ that made Van der Vaart’s head go up like a hound’s. But the idiot didn’t even have an animal’s sense and told one of the men to go see what that was instead of realizing it’d probably been thrown.

Not that Zlatan was complaining, since he managed to sneak around and catch up with the other man at the crates. Zlatan pistol-whipped him over the head before he’d quite finished turning to see who was there, then yanked the knife free and slashed the man’s throat as he fell, stepping away from the spraying blood. Then he purposefully kicked over a crate and yelled a couple times as he ran further into the factory, back towards the stairs.

Van der Vaart yelled something too and then a heavy tread came after Zlatan—too heavy to be Rafael, and too bad. This one was a bit smarter and instead of going straight after Zlatan, took a detour so he could tackle Zlatan from the side and knock away Zlatan’s gun. But then he got up to draw his own and Zlatan slammed out his leg, then rolled them over and headbutted the bastard. Then he was up and his gun was yards away, but they were right under where he’d stashed the shotgun. He grabbed it down and shot the man point-blank in the face, aiming so whatever pellets made it through would embed themselves in the floor.

As soon as Zlatan was sure the man was dead, he ran back the way he’d come, scooping up his pistol on the way. He wasn’t even to the barrel when Van der Vaart suddenly darted out from behind a vat.

Van der Vaart stared. Zlatan jerked up the pistol, but got delayed because the way he was holding the shotgun kept him from immediately pulling the pistol’s trigger. The other man threw himself to the side, then kept on going as he shouted that he’d shoot out all the vats if Zlatan followed.

Which Zlatan nearly did anyway, since he knew damn well Van der Vaart wasn’t suicidal, but then he thought about the fact that Van der Vaart had apparently already been leaving. And he spun around and ran back to the barrel.

It looked like Camoranesi’s weight had dragged him out of the barrel, but not soon enough. When Zlatan got to him, he was lying in a limp, motionless huddle with yellow grainy slime in his hair and all over his face; Zlatan lifted him by the shoulders and a trickle of the same stuff dropped from his slack mouth.

“Shit,” Zlatan hissed, setting Camoranesi back down. He kept one arm beneath the other man to hold him up while he ripped off Camoranesi’s tie and tore open his collar—the man’s neck still felt warm and his pulse was weak but there, thankfully—then used it to heave Camoranesi over one knee. Zlatan let Camoranesi’s head rest on the floor while he pounded on the man’s back, knocking out as much of the mash as he could, but the other man still wasn’t breathing.

So Zlatan flipped him onto his back, then raked the hair and filth from around his mouth and nose. Then he leaned down and sucked out the mash from Camoranesi’s nose and mouth; with the mouth he had to use his fingers to get the throat completely clear. More than once Zlatan had to stop to cough and spit because the mash tasted so fucking _awful_ , but he hurried it as much as he could so he could get to forcing some breath into Camoranesi’s lungs.

That was even less fun, and a lot more frustrating since it seemed like ages were passing with nothing happening. Zlatan’s temper finally snapped a bit and he hit Camoranesi on the chest, panting and glaring at the man. Then he got hold of himself and made himself bend down again, sealing his mouth over Camoranesi’s and squeezing the air from his lungs.

Camoranesi jerked and his tongue flopped about, then accidentally pressed into Zlatan’s as he coughed hard. Zlatan immediately lifted himself off and spat out his latest taste of over-fermented cornmash as Camoranesi rolled onto his side, continuing to gasp and cough. He curled up, his arm dropping to push hard against his stomach and his shoulders violently shaking.

“Now…aren’t you fucking glad I didn’t stay put?” Zlatan said. He was a little out of breath himself, given the fight and then having to pour all those lungfuls into Camoranesi.

Camoranesi did look up so he’d heard, but for some reason he just stared at Zlatan, lashes fluttering like mad over bleary eyes. “Zlatan?”

“No, Prince Charming.” After wiping his hand over his mouth, Zlatan began to sit back on his heels.

“Zlatan.” And Camoranesi was still staring.

Zlatan looked at him, then dragged one hand over his face. “Oh, God, please don’t have brain damage. You were slow enough before.”

That, at least, provoked some irritation out of the other man. “I…” Camoranesi tried and failed to sit up “…I need a drink.”

“You need a shower,” Zlatan muttered. “I need the drink.”

For some reason, Camoranesi quickly ducked his head at that, like he was embarrassed. He muttered something and tried to get up again, and this time he pulled it off. Teetering like crazy, but he stayed up long enough for Zlatan to get to his feet and put a hand under his arm. The moment he did, Camoranesi completely collapsed against him and snapped an iron grip on Zlatan’s arm, which was very striking when compared to Camoranesi’s feeble attempts at walking. He was also shaking rather badly, though he didn’t say a word as Zlatan dragged them back up to the office.

Thankfully, that was equipped with a good bathroom and a good liquor cabinet, and in short order a still-damp but clean Camoranesi was sitting next to Zlatan on the broad leather couch, and both of them had one shot of whiskey in their bellies and another in their hands. Camoranesi had stripped off his stained shirt and was still shivering even though Zlatan had finally passed over his suit-jacket; he had to hold onto his glass with both hands. Even so, he kept trying to push his ropy wet locks into a ponytail.

“I called the house while you were washing up and Gilardino says Buffon’s coming right over,” Zlatan said. He tossed back half his shot, rolled his tongue about his mouth, then grimaced: he could still taste that fucking mash.

Camoranesi stared into his whiskey. “Were you…kissing me?”

After a moment, Zlatan finished his glass and smacked it down on the table before them. “Just how long were you out?”

“I have no idea. I just remember feeling that shit get into my lungs and not being able to cough it out. It burned.” The other man finally put his drink to some use, and when he put down the empty glass, his hands had steadied a good deal. “And then I woke up and your tongue was in my mouth.”

“That was a slip, okay? I was trying to get you to breathe again,” Zlatan muttered. He pushed out his foot till it hit the table-leg, then shoved at that till he could stretch out his legs at full length. “If I hadn’t done that, you’d be stone-dead, so don’t go telling Nesta I was fucking harassing you. Honestly. When I _am_ harassing you, you’ll know.”

Camoranesi put his hands up to the sides of his face, fitting the fingers along the hairline. Then he slicked them back, squeezing water out to trickle down the back of the couch, and gathered his hair into a long tail as he turned to look squarely at Zlatan. The sides of Zlatan’s suit-jacket were pulled away by the motion so Camoranesi was flashing his whole torso from neck down to just above where the belly-button should be. “Really?”

Zlatan flicked his eyes up and down Camoranesi, starting to think about it, and then he shrugged and hauled the other man across the couch. His hands slipped on Camoranesi’s damp skin and a couple of his fingertips nudged beneath the other man’s waistband as he soundly kissed him. Then Zlatan pulled back and reached for his glass. “Yeah, really. See, that was what it’d have been like if I had—”

Except his arm was blocked by Camoranesi’s arm dropping around him, and Camoranesi’s mouth was thinking they were still kissing—actually, then Camoranesi sprawled into Zlatan’s lap and twisted his head so he could rub his tongue across the roof of Zlatan’s mouth, and that made it pretty clear that he was thinking about more than kissing. His hands came up and they weren’t trembling at all when he grabbed Zlatan’s head, jerking at it when Zlatan didn’t immediately respond. His hair fell out of its tail and strips of it began smacking into the sides of Zlatan’s face, so Zlatan raised a hand and shoved them out of the way, only to accidentally have his fingers tangled in them when Camoranesi bluntly rubbed himself against Zlatan’s thigh and purred.

“You’re getting my coat wet,” Zlatan finally mumbled.

A couple sinuous twists from Camoranesi and the coat was no longer getting wet. It was also on the floor, but Camoranesi’s hand was firmly shaping itself to Zlatan’s cock through Zlatan’s trousers, and Zlatan finally gave up. Why not, he thought, and shoved Camoranesi over onto the couch.

* * *

“How did they know we were only going to have one man here tonight? I added you at the last moment. And I’m beginning to think we didn’t get all the phone-taps.” With that last part, Nesta tossed an accusing look Zlatan’s way.

Zlatan leaned against the wall and flapped at the damp spots on his sleeves some more. “Or, you know, they might’ve bribed the distillery men. Seeing as they all took a smoking break at the same damn time.”

Nesta looked at Zlatan and chewed at his lip in a suggestive way, but the suggestion mostly involved medieval torture practices and improper application of modern medical techniques to make them last longer. Then he turned on his heel and went back to watch the others stuffing the two bodies into barrels for disposal. He didn’t actually sniff in disgust, but the mannerisms were all there.

“You really could’ve told me he was coming, too,” Zlatan called to Gilardino, who was talking to Nesta. “If I’m going to be blamed for thinking of what you don’t, I’d like a little advance warning.”

“I would think you’d like a thank-you better.” Buffon hove into view like a stern old schoolmaster steaming down the aisle towards some poor kid. “You prevented an attempt on this factory. It was a very small one, and I’m inclined to say it was more a probe or an independent bid that didn’t have Schultz’s full backing, but it was one nonetheless. So thank you.”

Zlatan drew himself up the wall a little so the two of them were the same height. “Yeah, well, I see you like a very small welcome for it. Then again, I am just doing what you pay me to do.”

“Hey, Zlatan, did you—” Camoranesi stepped out of the office where he’d been talking to Toni with what looked like the beginnings of a smile on his face. Of course, that stopped dead when he saw Buffon there. Actually, Camoranesi began to step backwards before he caught himself and stood still, staring back. He did a pretty good job of reflecting Buffon’s haughty stare, aside from the slight blush.

Buffon’s eyes drifted down Camoranesi’s face, then dropped to the man’s bare chest. His pupils widened a very little—so little that Zlatan doubted Buffon had been aware of it—before he turned away. “You look tired, Mauro. Consider taking tomorrow off. We’ll get Pippo to cover for you.”

Then he walked off while Zlatan got to see Camoranesi direct a venomous stare at Buffon’s back. “If you’re going to take that shit’s comments out on something, do it on somebody else’s coat. I still haven’t replaced the clothes I couldn’t get from my old place.”

“What? Oh, damn it, I’m sorry.” Camoranesi began to hand Zlatan’s coat back, but didn’t make much protest when Zlatan refused. He threw it on with a chin-jerk in the direction of the departing Buffon that was almost coquettishly disdainful. “God, those two annoy me sometimes. If you hadn’t saved me, they would’ve been at my funeral and taken care of my family, but since you did, they’re mad I didn’t do better. But it does get me a day off—and you too, I guess.”

“Yeah?” Zlatan said. He watched Nesta try to explain how he wanted the bodies put into the barrels and get progressively more frustrated at a green-faced Gilardino’s attempts to dismember them according to that. “By the way, I think Buffon was actually more offended you didn’t wipe off your face. Probably reminded him that he hasn’t gotten any since the camels at the Zoo got poisoned when the sewers backed up last month.”

A croaking sound came from beside Zlatan that was strange enough to make him turn, but it ended up just being Camoranesi trying to laugh and be embarrassed at the same time. In the end he laughed first, then looked at what he’d swiped off his mouth and blushed furiously, flicking a look up through his lashes at Zlatan. “Oh, shit. But God, Gigi does look like one of those sometimes, doesn’t he? Got a memory like an elephant, though—he’s never going to let this go.”

Zlatan grinned and glanced back at Nesta, who now was just doing all the hacking himself. He paused, then softened his smile to considering and slowly shifted so he could look at Mauro without craning his neck around. “Yeah. So. What does a day off around here mean?”

Mauro rubbed at his mouth some more and sidled a few inches closer, then pretended like he was very interested in hitching the too-long suit-jacket sleeves up his arms. “It could mean a lot. If you don’t mind me being there and maybe showing you.”

“Well, I was supposed to follow you around tomorrow anyway,” Zlatan said, letting his tongue drift over his lower lip. He laughed beneath his breath when Mauro promptly slid over a few more inches, eyes wandering back to Nesta.

* * *

“It’s not Sunday,” Luís sighed, but he sat down next to Zlatan in the pew anyway. “All right, you’ve got ten minutes before anyone else comes in. What is it?”

“You know, sometimes I think you aren’t happy to see me.” Zlatan smiled at the other man till Luís had fought down his huffing, then leaned back and stretched his arms out along the top of the pew. “Nah, I know you are. It’s nothing much—I actually was just around and I don’t have much to do right now.”

Luís raised his eyebrows and folded his hands together on his lap. Today he must have been planning to go out and help with something around the neighborhood, since he’d ditched the cassock and just had the black shirt and collar paired with coarse black work-trousers. “Really. With Maldini complaining to Lippi and Lippi screaming at Dutch Schultz, and Van der Vaart being publicly scolded by Van Basten for getting ahead of himself.”

“Oh, really? I’m really sorry I missed that. Where was it?” Zlatan asked. He didn’t expect and he didn’t get an answer. “By the way, thanks for the cop the other night, but Jesus, did we have to use baseball? I hate baseball.”

“You’re in New York City in America, Zlatan. When you can change the national pastime, you can complain to me.” That was said with a smirk on his face, since Luís was a proud Dodgers fan even though he’d once admitted he could only listen on the radio and always fell asleep when seeing the games in person. “But really, nothing?”

Zlatan opened his mouth, then closed it. Then he kicked at a scuff-mark on the floor. “Well, so you told me this was going to be a different game, but…is it usually this easy to get their pants down? Those seem to come undone easier than their guard.”

The series of twitches and quirks Luís’ face underwent looked a bit painful, but it served him right for the fucking baseball. “Are you saying…”

“Okay, I saved Mauro’s life and all by getting him to breathe again, but come on. He’s been on at this for how long? That can’t be that new to him,” Zlatan said.

“Camoranesi? Are you serious?” Luís said. But he didn’t even wait for Zlatan to nod before he groaned and dropped forward to cradle his head in his hands. “Couldn’t you just say no?”

Not that Luís could see the annoyed look Zlatan shot him, but Zlatan knew the other man would feel it anyway. “Hey. You weren’t there. It’s not that simple.”

“It’s a two-letter word,” Luís moaned.

“Not when his tongue is that deep in your mouth,” Zlatan said.

After a long moment, Luís lifted his head. And he kept lifting it, blinking hard as he muttered something towards the ceiling. He raised and lowered his hands a few times, their palms turned heavenwards, but nothing fell out of the rafters or boomed down from the sky. Which just went to show that on a Tuesday morning, even God didn’t want to get up before eight.

Zlatan swung his arms over his head and forward to grab the pew in front of him, then stretched them till the joints popped. Then he gave himself a shake and got up. “Anyway, he’s taking me to some club tonight and apparently I might even run into Mancini, and I didn’t even have to kill anybody for that. So not too bad.”

“Well, to be honest I’m going to have to go consult a few things. I can’t quite remember if the Church ever accepted Dante’s ranking for the sins of murder and sodomy,” Luís muttered. He was covering his face again. “But personally: yes, if you can avoid killing them, that’s a good thing. So is avoiding liquor and loose women, and…are you listening to me or are you staring at whatever’s making that noise outside?”

“There’s no reason why I can’t do both at once,” Zlatan said. He twisted back around and waited till Luís looked up before flashing his angelic smile. “I’m not Catholic, remember? Besides, if I was a Catholic, you’d just need to assign me a couple Hail Marys and maybe ask me to pay for the altar-dusting this week to save my soul.”

Luís pursed his lips a few times before he got up, shaking his head. “Which is exactly why I worry so much about it. And you. And just…mind yourself, all right? I expect to see you in here with the rest on Sunday morning, and if you grumble one more time about the early Mass I’ll pitch a hymnal at you.”

* * *

The club was called some pun on some kind of flower. Technically it was only supposed to be a restaurant, and it did have a small area in the front with white-clothed tables and snooty waiters, but the main action happened in the extensive backroom area. VIP dining rooms, a bar imported from Sicily and with the _lupara_ scars to prove it, giggling girls in sequins jitterbugging down the halls and a wide selection of gambling games.

Zlatan glanced that way a couple times, but ultimately opted for the pool tables while the kitchen got his dinner ready. He was in the middle of soundly beating Mauro at a second set, some random blonde with long red nails alternating her cuddling between the two of them, when that and Mancini showed up at the same time.

“Ah, fuck…” Mauro groaned, watching his last shot knock the eight-ball into the left near corner pocket. He put both arms down on the table rim, bending his head lower than his hips so he could yank his tie-less collar even looser. The girl draped over him and whispered consolations into his ear while stroking her hand along his side. “You want to even bother racking it up again?”

Too much Parmesan on the chicken, Zlatan thought as he chewed, but otherwise pretty damn good. He tucked his cue under one arm and picked up his plate, then stuffed his mouth again and watched the small commotion travel across the room. Mancini’s graying hair still curled over his collar, and the woman glued to his hip applied her lipstick like she wanted everyone to look there first for exactly one reason. “Not really. You’re awful, you know.”

“Yeah.” Mauro laughed, turning his head to nuzzle along the girl’s cheek. His face eventually emerged from behind her bob so he could see what had Zlatan looking. “Oh, hell. Let’s go get a room and sit down for a while. Whenever Mancini’s here, he just has to have everything be about him and it gets exhausting to watch, but he gets bored easy. He’ll be out in a half-hour and then it’ll go back to normal.”

“You’re a bit of a rag, aren’t you? First telling me about the great Buffon’s flaws and then coming down on Mancini,” Zlatan teased. He hitched up his arm and twisted so the cue under it was over the table, then flipped out his elbow so the stick hit the green felt. “You’re going to get me off on the wrong foot here.”

The girl hid a giggle behind her hand, but over her fingers her eyes were cool and judging. Obviously a regular, so she’d know to keep her mouth shut about anything she heard. On the other hand, Mauro just rolled his eyes and rolled himself as well, swinging off the pool table so he and the girl moved towards one of the hallways. “You’re _Zlatan_. Can’t get off to any worse start than that.”

“Hey.” The plate was half-full, but Zlatan didn’t want to get weighed down so early in the night so he handed that over to a passing server. He walked after Mauro, who now had his arm around the girl’s waist and his conspiratorial grin loosely pressed to the girl’s neck, both of them frequently glancing back at Zlatan. “I’d say that should guarantee me the _best_ start. After all, who else do you know who’s killed as many men as me in two weeks?”

“You’ve killed people?” Wide eyes from the girl. A complete act, as her sudden lustful smile proved. “Only bad guys, right?”

Mauro was somewhat less amused and glanced down, then rather roughly shouldered his way into a room ahead of a couple Zlatan didn’t recognize—hangers-on, probably. He ignored the girl’s squeak and then her petulant stamp as she lost her grip on him and was left behind. “Yeah, some of ours.”

“Sorry if you were close to any of them, but it happens. Besides, last year you all were at each other’s throats, and this year you still don’t like Mancini too much,” Zlatan amiably replied. He scooped along the girl as he passed her and she immediately snuggled up to his side, her tongue flicking kittenishly over his ear.

It looked like maybe Mauro was mad enough to try and shut the door on them, but Zlatan got in too fast. He grabbed Mauro’s raised hand, then pulled him along towards the nearly-full bottle of something somebody had left behind. An armchair got in the way, but that worked in Zlatan’s favor; he let Mauro trip over it, then nudged the man with a hip so Mauro sat down hard on it. Then he pushed the girl onto Mauro’s lap, whispering that maybe she could help cheer him up. She promptly went to it while Zlatan poured out a couple glasses, then tried the stuff and found it to be good Irish whisky.

“I wasn’t, actually, but what do you know about—”

Sensible girl. She kept Mauro too busy to talk while Zlatan casually walked over to the door and peeked out. Near the end of the hall, Mancini was holding forth on something so his entourage took up the whole damn space. He finished up by making a man’s flower disappear from his buttonhole with a snap of his fingers; the flower reappeared as he pretended to draw it out from behind a woman’s ear.

Then he began to fasten the flower to his own buttonhole, but a playing card suddenly lodged in the bloom. Mancini stopped dead, his followers gasped, and then one or two of the men began to start towards Zlatan with menacing looks on their faces when they realized just who had flicked that card.

Zlatan grinned and waved them back. “It’s rotten on the side. Didn’t want you to have a shitty flower on your suit.”

The man who’d originally had the flower started to puff up then, but Mancini abruptly put up a hand. He was smiling, thin-lipped and cool-eyed, and Zlatan acknowledged that with a nod as he went back into the room, shutting the door.

By then Mauro had the girl’s dress off and was playing around with her garters, slipping his fingers beneath them before letting them snap back against her thighs. She squealed in protest every time, but her kisses were getting progressively longer. When Zlatan came over, she looked up while sucking on Mauro’s lower lip and then didn’t miss a beat as she pushed one hand down Mauro’s trousers while reaching out to feel up Zlatan with the other.

The chair wasn’t big enough to hold all three of them, so Zlatan eventually hauled the other two to the floor. The girl did the sensible thing and undulated against whatever she was sprawled on, but Mauro was a little more awkward and got all stuck on what and who to touch first. Plus he still seemed a bit worked up over the conversation, since he kept trying to bite Zlatan. Finally Zlatan took advantage of the girl getting Mauro’s trousers down to grab the other man’s suspenders. Then he kissed Mauro deep and hard, shoving his head back into the floor, and twisted up the suspenders so Mauro’s arms were pinned to his sides.

Once Mauro figured out what had happened, he panicked and bucked hard, but Zlatan saw it coming and heaved the girl aside like he wanted her attentions on him. So she missed that and she also missed Mauro’s cursing, since Zlatan kept his mouth sealed tight over the other man’s till he had hold on Mauro’s cock. And then he worked on seeing what all that goddamn biting had been about, teasing his other hand around the knotted suspenders and Mauro’s shirt until Mauro wasn’t biting anymore but whining instead. He shoved his cock over and over into Zlatan’s deliberately loose grip, butting his head against Zlatan’s knee as Zlatan chose to neck with the girl instead. She didn’t even raise an eyebrow, and actually, at one point she even put out her hand to shove Mauro’s head away.

By the time Zlatan tugged Mauro over her splayed body, she wasn’t even bothering with the innocent act anymore. Every single kiss was drawn out so he got a good view of their tongues, every stroke of her hands played into his eyes. And Mauro wasn’t objecting at all, but instead was impatiently shoving his ass into Zlatan’s hands.

Zlatan was tempted to just watch the two of them, but as he nibbled at Mauro’s buttock, he happened to glance at his watch. And he started to sigh, despite being hard enough to break steel over his erection without any problem, but then the girl’s knees jerked up on either side of Mauro and shivered, and Zlatan was reminded that hey, even the lousy parts had great silver linings.

So he just got to fucking Mauro, and then after the other man was done—a little too fast, Zlatan thought—he moved on to the girl. She probably wasn’t used to men bothering with their fingers alongside their cocks and when she came, her wide eyes had genuine shock in them. And her slow, licking thank-you kiss afterward wasn’t bad, either.

Mauro finished wriggling out of the suspenders just as she left, taking a glass of whisky with her. He accepted the other glass that Zlatan pressed on him, then flopped down to rest his head on Zlatan’s calf. It made it awkward for him to pour the whisky into his mouth, but then, he didn’t seem terribly concerned with not spilling. “You really _are_ that good. And you really are that much of an asshole.”

“If Buffon and Nesta get to be, I think I get to be. Besides, it’s not like I knew who the hell anybody was when I first came here,” Zlatan said. He levered himself up into a sitting position, then rested his elbow on the table. After swigging from the bottle, he held that out and topped up Mauro’s glass. “It was never personal because it couldn’t be when I didn’t know people. And even without that, I work _clean_. I’ve heard shit now about you guys, what you’ve done to each other…”

Grimacing, Mauro nodded and drained his glass. Then he put that down on the floor, and then he lazily pushed it away from him before twisting about, his chin digging into Zlatan’s leg as he looked up. “Okay, yeah, I guess it’d be hard for you not to hear about that. But you don’t know everything. It got complicated. Ancelotti…well, it was kind of his fault too…”

“Yeah, well, I can hear all about it now, right? Except not _right_ now.” Zlatan took his elbow off the table and began to get up, only to have Mauro climb up him with surprising speed. The other man sloppily kissed Zlatan, eyes half-shut and with oddly attractive little squeaking sounds coming from deep in his throat, and Zlatan felt genuinely frustrated about having to pry him off. “Hey, in a second. I need to take a piss first.”

“Oh,” Mauro said. He looked disappointed, but rolled off willingly enough. “Further down and take a right, then it’s the second door on the left.”

“I’ll go see if Mancini’s gone too. Those highballs at the bar looked good. I want to know if they’ll taste that good, too.” So his point was clear, Zlatan gave Mauro a parting lick along the jaw, lapping up some of the whisky the other man had let spill out, and Mauro groaned and looked somewhat more reconciled to the break.

Mancini and the entourage were gone from the hall, and Zlatan didn’t hear any noise that’d fit from the main gaming room, but he couldn’t draw any conclusions from that. He figured he’d catch a waiter on his way back and headed for the men’s room.

It was empty when he stepped inside so he could take the moment to marvel at the marble and gilt and—and Jesus Christ, what looked like diamonds set into the faucet handles. Zlatan was tempted to go back out and grab a glass to do a scratch-test, but he shook that off and stepped into one of the stalls. He stuck his hand out behind him so the door didn’t completely close, then undid his fly.

Somebody else came in behind him. They paused, probably wondering why he wasn’t using one of the urinals against the wall, before finally scooting into the next stall over. After doing his trousers back up and flushing his toilet, Zlatan took out a handkerchief and then whipped himself out of his stall and into the neighboring stall’s door. Which wasn’t even closed, so it flew inwards before ramming into whoever it was. They grunted and stumbled, then cursed as their toilet suddenly flushed. And then they gasped as Zlatan squeezed himself inside, banged the door shut with his hip, and slammed them up against the stall wall with the handkerchief over their mouth.

Gilardino got in a surprisingly vicious kick to the upper part of Zlatan’s shin before Zlatan had him flattened with pure body weight. He was less successful in not panicking over the gag and nearly inhaled the damn thing so Zlatan had to drop that and shake the man to stop his choking. “What are you doing?” he wheezed.

“What are _you_ doing? Except I know what you’re doing, since I noticed Buffon talking to you earlier,” Zlatan sighed. He shifted his hands down to Gilardino’s upper arms. “Honestly. What do you think I’m going to do, kill Mauro in the middle of _your_ busy nightclub and then try to run? When you’d know right away who did it?”

“It wasn’t Buffon who told me to follow you around,” Gilardino said. For all his apparent lack of weight—literal and figurative—he did have a promising glare.

Then again, spending that much time with Nesta probably could teach a kitten how to look like that. Zlatan sighed again. “Thanks for confirming that you _are_ following me around. So all right, it was Nesta then.”

Gilardino clammed up his mouth so tightly that little vertical grooves appeared beneath his lower lip.

For a moment, Zlatan seriously considered shaking him again. But then he reviewed the conversation and thought of something better. “I’m curious…if you weren’t talking to Buffon about me, then what were you talking about? You looked like every word of his was wrapped in greenbacks.”

“Nothing. It’s not any of your business. It wasn’t important anyway,” Gilardino said in a rush. His cheeks pinked and he began to struggle again, but Zlatan stopped that with careful application of pressure. “Look, I’m sorry. Would you get off me now?”

“You’re not sorry. You never thought you were doing anything wrong in the first place. Nesta never would’ve apologized.” Zlatan let his hands slip a little lower, to Gilardino’s elbows.

Gilardino’s head jerked up and back, his pretty brown eyes wide and hurt. Then he put up his hands and shoved weakly at Zlatan’s chest. “I’m not Nesta. And please get off.”

“You’ve got to be the politest one of them, even including Maldini,” Zlatan said, laughing. He paused, then smiled wider at the offended look on Gilardino’s face. “Honestly, that’s a nice change. There are so many sourpusses around that you all start sounding alike to me—buzz buzz buzz in my ear. It makes you noticeable…if you care about that. Or Buffon does.”

Something a little nastier began to come out of Gilardino’s mouth, but he cut himself off and just tried to kick at Zlatan again. He gasped when Zlatan flexed his fingers into the other man’s arms.

“But there’s noticeable and noticeable, you know. You can call me a bastard all you want, but you have to admit, Buffon looks at me when he talks to me.” Zlatan waited again for that flare in Gilardino’s eyes, then shrugged and pretended to be indifferent. “Not that I’m saying you can be me, because _I’m_ me, and besides, you’re just not cut out to be a bastard, but you could use that nice-guy act better.”

“Well, Buffon isn’t leaving spit all over your throat either,” Gilardino finally said, chin up and eyes blazing and hair ruffled into his eyes.

He looked like a goddamn puppy who needed to be calmed down, but Zlatan generously refrained from saying that. Instead he stooped down—and ended up having to pull Gilardino up a bit—and began leaving some of his own spit all over Gilardino’s throat. He also let go of Gilardino’s arms and the first thing the other man did was push at him, but it was a pathetic effort so Zlatan went on with tracing out the tendon that led up Gilardino’s neck towards his ear. And Gilardino made some kind of pat at Zlatan’s shoulders, and then finally hooked his hands over those and sagged against the wall. Zlatan bit in, then sucked hard at the flesh his teeth encircled till he could feel it starting to swell; Gilardino moaned and squirmed.

Then Zlatan pushed him down and straightened up. He cocked his head to get a look at the hickey he’d left, then nodded. “That should do it. Just let him see that and he’ll wonder who the hell did it. Then he’d have to wonder why the hell you let them do it, and then it should get interesting.”

Collapsed against the wall, Gilardino stared vaguely up at Zlatan. He licked his lower lip like his tongue was half-numbed, letting it drag a bit before pulling it back into his mouth. His hand drifted up and he absently adjusted his tie-knot downwards, then began fiddling with the plain gold stickpin in his tie. “You think that’s all he needs? Just one?”

Gilardino probably hadn’t meant that the way Zlatan’s cock, which was still a bit excited from Mauro’s last kiss, took it, but then again, these Italians were beginning to make Zlatan wonder if there was some whole secret language of groping Luís hadn’t told him about. Which if true was a dumb way to make sure Zlatan never stumbled across it. “What, you want another one?”

Mouth partly open, cheeks reddened, Gilardino appeared to seriously ponder the question. Then a strange, half-bitter half-eager look came into his eyes and he took a very clear step forward, his hands going up to Zlatan’s shoulders again. “I think I would, please.”

Zlatan blinked. “Okay, see, that’s making the niceness work for—”

Somebody jerked open the hallway door and started to walk into the bathroom, and Gilardino, who’d been impatiently hauling down Zlatan’s head, abruptly detoured. And tried to run through the damn stall wall; Zlatan pinned him back against that—thankfully, Gilardino was already shorter than the top of the stall—pulled up Gilardino’s legs so his feet wouldn’t show and hissed, “Sound like a girl.”

He got a flash of Gilardino’s confused expression as he looked up, but he couldn’t really dwell on it since Mancini was standing outside, looking amused. “I’m interrupting, aren’t I?”

“Yeah, but there are plenty of other stalls. Nothing really special about this one aside from who’s in it,” Zlatan said, smiling. It was hard not to run short of breath while saying all that, since Gilardino turned out to have a bit more to him than Zlatan was expecting. But then the other man shifted a bit and got one foot on the toilet-rim, which helped. What didn’t was the way he suddenly dragged Zlatan forward, and God knew why he did that since his face ended up smashed into Zlatan’s chest. “I don’t mind a listening audience if you don’t mind some background noise.”

Mancini smiled appreciatively, then waved his hand in a dismissive gesture towards the urinals. “Oh, I’m not here for that. I’m here to see you.”

Zlatan raised his eyebrows. To be honest, it was because Gilardino had just made a nervous little mumble into his chest and it’d unexpectedly tickled, but it fit the conversation too so Zlatan went with it. “Right _now_? Can I take a rain-check?”

A flicker of surprise was rapidly chased away by a distinct air of irritation, though Mancini’s smile remained charming. “You’ve made such a name for yourself, it’s even caught my attention and had me hurrying to meet you as soon as I could.”

The noise Gilardino made them was definitely incredulous, but it was still annoyingly ticklish. Zlatan pressed a little harder against him, trying to tell him to shut up, and suddenly Gilardino twisted hard and moaned, his hips trying to jerk up and down. Then Zlatan realized how his leg was fitting against Gilardino and he began to move back, only to have the other man grind his open mouth into Zlatan’s chest, instantly wetting Zlatan’s shirt to the skin. “Danger of fame, I guess,” Zlatan gritted out. Of all the times…well, fine. Mancini needed to stop thinking everyone was going to drop at his feet whenever he appeared, anyway. “Well, so we’re meeting.”

Gilardino hissed when Zlatan’s hand closed over his erection, then scrabbled at Zlatan’s shoulders as he tried to hitch himself up the wall. He was hanging awkwardly, his arms not quite straightened out all the way, but if he went any higher Mancini might be able to see who he was. So Zlatan grabbed at Gilardino’s cock and balls and urged him back down. Then he lifted his elbows so the other man could reach around and grab at the back of his shoulders, which somewhat eased the strain.

“So we are,” Mancini said. His brows were raised but his gaze had dropped to the door, as if he could see through it. Then he shook himself very slightly and looked back at Zlatan. “So what brought you to us, anyway?”

“Oh, the very attractive offer,” Zlatan shrugged. Against his chest Gilardino was still gasping from the way Zlatan had adjusted him and Zlatan felt a little bit bad for that. So he started rubbing the heel of his hand down Gilardino’s cock and the other man’s fingers gouged into his shoulders till they were threatening to poke through the bone. “Maldini—”

Mancini pulled at his nose and nodded in an agreeing way, then fluttered his hand as if that was what he’d expected, but not necessarily what he _liked_. “Yes, Paolo would. He does a very good job of that for Carlo.”

Zlatan tipped his head. “You and Ancelotti still get all territorial? I thought I was walking into an ordered house, here.”

“Does that make a difference?” It sounded like Mancini expected exactly one answer to that.

“Well, yes,” Zlatan said, trying not to grin at Mancini’s surprise. “I want to keep getting my paycheck, and I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but people tend to forget about that when they’re going to war with each other. Before I joined up with you, I was actually wondering whether I should switch to another borough.”

“To Madden and Luciano?” Mancini said, all disdainful sniff.

Gilardino sucked in his breath, so maybe he was still listening, but then his exhale was such a harsh, low gasp that Zlatan knew he couldn’t pass the other man off as a girl. Oh, well. “They’ve got most of the city with them and run a steady ship. It’s beginning to look like either you get on their board or you just lose out, you know? So okay, then you have to listen to them but they have to listen to you, too. And anyway, right now they have the manpower to make you listen. It looks like they just aren’t bothering to talk while you and Ancelotti and Van Basten are all busy having your own arguments.”

“You sound like you’ve been talking to Marcello,” Mancini abruptly said, frowning. His eyes narrowed and he took a step closer.

“Lippi? I don’t even know what he looks like. He’s _really_ good—he’s never had a photo of him show up in the papers yet, has he? I haven’t been able to find one, anyway,” Zlatan replied, letting his awe show. He worked down Gilardino’s fly, but then had the damnedest time getting his fingers in beneath the man’s boxers. “But I have been around. Seen more than one turf war.”

Mancini appeared to seriously think for a few moments, and when he was doing that, he shed the flash to reveal some potentially daunting steel. “If you can figure all that, then why are you here and not uptown?”

“The attractive offer,” Zlatan grinned. Then he pulled a solemn face, and at the same time he stooped a bit and finally got Gilardino’s cock out and pointed up beneath the other man’s shirt. “I think the Italians are going to win.”

“Quite the gambling man, aren’t you? Luciano’s also Italian, of a sort.” That last double-edged dig aside, it mostly looked like Mancini was still mulling things over. He even began to turn before he suddenly seemed to remember Zlatan, and then the glitter came back in the thin, sharp smile he gave Zlatan. “You _are_ an interesting one. I’ll remember you.”

Zlatan was glad of the opportunity to duck down and quickly muffle Gilardino’s clearly impending shout, since otherwise he thought he’d have to throw something at Mancini’s head. Not because he disliked the man—actually, he thought a couple drinks together and the two of them could get a pretty good working agreement together—but because Mancini just made that sort of impression. A little like how Paolo always seemed to be asking for somebody to go up and swipe some dust over his pristine calm, and Nesta to prod him into exploding and getting that over with—Gilardino’s teeth in Zlatan’s lip cut off that train of thought.

And the little shit was brutal, and never mind his nice manners. He snapped in deep and then hung on to maul Zlatan more than Mauro had managed to; Zlatan actually tasted blood before Gilardino’s spasms knocked his head back and his mouth off Zlatan’s lip. The other man’s eyes rolled into his head, then lingered that way as he went boneless.

He at least recovered just as quickly as he went off so Zlatan wasn’t stuck with wrestling his floppy limbs for more than a few seconds. Also his embarrassment seemed to return, as Gilardino attempted to put his clothes in order before both of his feet were even on the ground. “Oh, my _God_. Mancini. You—while he—and—and—he’s such a bastard. _Still_.”

“I bet he feels like one, the way you all go on,” Zlatan dryly muttered. He backed off and got some toilet paper so Gilardino could clean off his stomach. “Don’t look at me like that. Yeah, I’m sure he was more awful last year than the papers said, and I’m sure you all retaliated and everything. But believe me, Van Basten wouldn’t have had it so easy if you weren’t so busy keeping score with that.”

“I guess you would know.” But Gilardino sounded more thoughtful than accusing. He began to toss the soiled wad of paper in the toilet, but then stopped to look at Zlatan. “Did you mean what you said? About…about thinking we’ll win?”

Zlatan pulled idly at his shirt, then slung his arm around Gilardino’s shoulders. He was surprised when the other man immediately leaned into it, but didn’t think about it too long because shit, Mauro was going to be wondering where the hell he’d gone. “I’m a soldier for hire, Gila. I always go with the winner, and my side never loses.”

Gilardino paused, his mouth twitching in a way that, strangely enough, reminded Zlatan of Paolo. Then the other man suddenly stood up on his toes and wrapped his arms around Zlatan’s neck, and laid a very soft, sweet kiss on Zlatan’s mouth, and that was definitely just Gilardino. “Honestly, I really hated fighting against you. You’re scary as hell when you’re not ridiculous.”

“I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that last part,” Zlatan said. “If you do me a favor: when you show off all those bruises to Buffon, remember not to do it when I’m in the same room, all right? It doesn’t help to keep me busy fighting with you either.”

* * *

“Great sermon, Luís. I really liked the bit about alcohol being the Devil’s panacea. Also, great news—I figured out how I can do this without killing. Well, I still have to kill some people, but not as many as I thought before,” Zlatan said, strolling into the office.

Luís had just taken off his fancy formal robes and was arm-deep in his closet, but his voice came back loud and clear and resigned. “Does this have anything to do with why Gilardino was unusually vague and stuttering in the confessional today?”

The curtains were partially drawn over the windows, the thick tassels of their ropes swinging slightly in a draft. Zlatan headed for them and began to look outside, only to quickly duck to the side as he spotted Buffon chatting with a family just on the front sidewalk. “Maybe.”

“Zlatan, honestly. Alberto was an altar-boy here,” Luís said, like that somehow made Zlatan the one who’d let him down.

“Really? Well, it’s not like he ever mentioned that to me. He’s come a long way since he was that stupid.” The window was high up even for Buffon to have a good view of it, but Zlatan still slouched among the bunched curtains just in case. Then he lifted his head and watched as Nesta came stalking up the sidewalk, the usual expression of grim rage on his face. “Hey, hey, it was all his fault it happened, not mine, but I made sure he enjoyed it anyway. Stop staring daggers into my back. I’ve got enough of that already, thanks.”

Luís shut the closet doors, then walked across the room to go do something else. “Praise be, they haven’t all succumbed to your charms yet. And I think Buffon or Nesta might prove significantly more reluctant to dance to your tune.”

“Nesta doesn’t even dance. Doesn’t know whether he’s got a left foot or not. Trust me, I know,” Zlatan muttered. He pulled at his nose, then turned around to look at the other man. “Look, are you actually going to make a fuss over this? I don’t remember you being this uncomfortable about it before.”

“Not the way you think. I don’t care who you go to bed with—Church doctrine might say otherwise, but God knows how many times they’ve reversed themselves before. The frail, imperfect hearing of man is a poor instrument for taking in God’s Word.” After crossing himself, Luís resumed stuffing his sermon notes into his desk drawer. “But _why_ you do it…you really think that you can get away with it without any consequences?”

Zlatan rolled his eyes and went back to looking at Nesta. He’d heard that the other man was capable of smiling, but he’d yet to see it himself and he was beginning to think that maybe Nesta had just burned off that ability. He’d known a guy once, Mellberg, who’d burned his tongue and never been able to taste the difference between salt and sugar afterward. Of course, Mellberg had been plain strange and hadn’t minded since it meant he could eat even cheaper food and spend the saved money on his barber. “I think I managed to get to Mancini and give him some food for thought about all their idiotic infighting, and nobody died for that. I think I’m _going_ to get away with it, and not have you make me attend half as many funerals. Honestly, I thought you’d be all about this plan.”

“Well—” Luís started. Then he stopped, staring hard into space. He slowly leaned back till his hands lifted off his desk, then hitched himself a bit further as he thoughtfully rubbed at his chin. “Well. Well, then…may God smile on your enterprise.”

“Luís, you’re scaring me. I’m not leaving till you take that back.”

“God’s blessing? You want me to take _God’s blessing_ back? Zlatan, you’ll take it and you’ll damn well smirk about it, because believe me, you’ll be needing it. Now go…off…to who—damn it, I mean whatever you’re doing. And bring me some more Madeira, would you? Between you and Alberto squirming around panting in the confessional this morning, I’m looking into reconsecrating the church.”

* * *

The door opened just as Zlatan rolled off the bed and onto his feet. His left foot fell on his shirt and his right on his trousers, and then he caught himself on the bedside table and looked up into Paolo’s hastily rearranging expression. Oddly enough, the face Paolo was trying to hide from Zlatan seemed to be an offended one.

“Wait a—” Zlatan said.

But Paolo had already gestured to come into the hall and was shutting the door. Blinking, Zlatan tossed on his clothes, then ran a hand through his hair as he absently stared about the room, trying to remember if he’d forgotten something. Then he looked down at the grunting lump on the bed: Camoranesi was mostly stuffed under the sheets except for one surprisingly delicate foot and his ponytail, which snaked out to curl possessively over one of the pillows. Zlatan leaned over and twitched it about to make a perfect circle before he went into the hall.

It was an ungodly hour of the morning and he knew that even without seeing the grayish sky outside the window, but for some reason Inzaghi was already fully dressed and…and straightening pictures on the walls. There were about fifteen of them and he was moving down the line, adjusting and then stepping back to look, and then adjusting again. Come to think of it, Zlatan vaguely remembered dragging Camoranesi past Inzaghi two hours ago and the other man had been doing the same thing, so maybe Inzaghi just didn’t sleep when he wasn’t totting up the accounts. He was such a wizard with numbers that he seemed more like a calculating machine than a person.

“I see you’ve settled in quite well,” Paolo quietly said, pulling Zlatan over to the side. He’d composed himself, but he still couldn’t help darting a look past Zlatan’s shoulder and that look was distinctly resentful. “Buffon says he wishes he didn’t have to admit the number of attacks on our shipments have gone down since you’ve joined.”

“Of course they did. I was leading most of them since Van Basten told Ruud to take a hike.” Zlatan idly scratched at his neck and took up a position leaning against the wall. He felt something poke at his back and flexed his shoulder to push it away, then looked down the hall to see Inzaghi slowly turn to give him a flat, fixed look like a crocodile who’d just had its toes stepped on. Nothing changed when Zlatan gave the other man a little wave and purposefully shoved the picture further askew on its hook, and possibly that was the truly creepy part. “Van der Vaart couldn’t plan his way out of a paper bag, and Van Persie loses his temper too easily.”

Paolo was staring at Zlatan with a funny tension around his mouth, but he kept shaking himself like whatever it was doing that was a distraction. Or that he wanted it to be just a distraction. “And you’ve been very diligent in doing your share of whatever we ask. I understand you’ve also been very diligent in taking your share.”

“What? Are you saying I’m greedy?” Zlatan asked, twisting back. He pushed himself up the wall, then hung forward so he was looking nearly straight down at Paolo.

“No,” Paolo said, blinking. His hand came up and pushed the hair off his forehead. For a moment he was looking at Zlatan’s neck instead of Zlatan’s eyes. “I—meant—you seem to be enjoying yourself. Which is good. I’d like to know if we aren’t more pleasant to be around than Van Basten.”

“Oh.” Zlatan shifted back a bit. “Well. Yeah. It’s been fun. I think I’m getting along with everyone who wants to get along, you know…”

The hand was still up and ruffling in Paolo’s hair, and now it looked like it was doing a little pulling, too. It was rapidly turning his neat curls into a tousled mess. “I didn’t realize at the time that you were interested in having such a wide involvement,” he added rather snappishly.

He was staring through Zlatan’s shoulder and finally Zlatan understood what was going on; he blamed his slowness on the time and on Inzaghi, who as far as he could hear was still doing his eerie ghosting along the hall. “Sorry, were you bringing me the key?”

Paolo blinked. Then his memory clearly kicked in and he looked a bit worried before he stuffed that down and shook his head. “Look, Zlatan, I believe what was said was—”

“Well, I remember saying that in return I’d provide whatever of my services you find useful, exclusive of anybody else. Of course, when I say exclusive, I’m thinking of you all together, since it seems like that’s how a gang works,” Zlatan said, nice and slow and careful. He widened his eyes and pretended to look concerned. “You weren’t around for the whole week, so I figured that that mean I should see to the other boys. Get to know them, help out wherever I could…”

“Yes,” Paolo stiffly said. He paused, like he wasn’t quite sure why he’d said that, and then pressed the heel of his hand into his temple. Now he looked irritated with himself, but beneath that there still was a trace of decided resentment. Good thing Camoranesi was a deep sleeper. “Of course. You’re right, that’s very…but you asked for a key to my house.”

Zlatan shrugged. “And…you didn’t bring one. I figured I could get a lot more done if I didn’t sit around waiting for that.”

“I see.” It seemed like Paolo dearly wanted to find something wrong with that, but he couldn’t. Not and still act like he was the generous, selfless leader of the group, and the twitching around his mouth was definitely proof that he was having strong misgivings about how useful that was. “Well. It’s come down that there’ll be a meeting, about trying to get a truce for the holiday coming up. I’ll be meeting with Van der Sar at the cathedral later today.”

“Want me to check out the place first? I’ve seen them set ambushes before and I know how they work,” Zlatan said.

Paolo was still trying not to spit out that he thought he was _worth_ waiting for, and he was doing a pretty good job of it except for the hair-pulling. His wife was going to wonder why she bothered letting him use her curler, if that was how he came back at the end of the day. “No, but I’d like you to talk to Rino about that—Gattuso’s coming with me. I do trust you, but I also want this truce and if they see you anywhere nearby…well, they seem very bitter about your defection.”

“Yeah, I know. It’s great.” Zlatan pretended not to notice Paolo’s brief moment of confusion. “So where do you want me?”

“Gigi and Sandro are going to be away as well, since I’m not about to present a single target if it does go bad. I’m not sure where exactly they’ll be going to, but they’ll be personally doing the rounds of some of our biggest customers.” And Paolo finally noticed what he was doing to himself and took his hand out of his hair. He didn’t make any attempt to try and see the extent of the damage in the glass of any of the picture frames, but he did let another self-castigating look flash over his face. “It’ll be a good opportunity for you to meet some of them as well. Not everyone believes yet that you’ve really switched sides, so it should be reassuring for everybody.”

* * *

After spreading his arms along the top of the seat, Zlatan settled back with a loud sigh. In the driver’s seat, Buffon silently started the car. In the front passenger seat, Nesta silently glowered at Zlatan via the rearview mirror.

Zlatan looked at his watch and found that they still had another two hours to go. He rolled his head back and stared at the ceiling, wondering just what the hell Paolo had been thinking. If this little walkabout was any less reassuring about how Nesta and Buffon felt about him, then they’d have knives at each other’s throats. And Paolo was supposed to be some master reader of men?

Of course, Zlatan didn’t have to put up with it anymore. He thought he’d done very well to last for most of the day, and now that the sun was down and they’d already heard from Gilardino that the truce meeting had gone off without a hitch, he figured he could relax. So he slouched down further, squeezing his knees up against the backs of Nesta’s and Buffon’s seats.

Buffon grunted and threw himself back into his seat as he backed the car towards the rising garage doors, but Nesta whipped himself around to all but froth at the mouth at Zlatan. “What do you think you’re doing?”

Something glinted way ahead of them, out on the sidewalk. Zlatan lunged forward, throwing himself on top of Nesta’s head and grabbing Buffon by the shoulder to haul him down as well. Of course Nesta started cursing at him, and fine, the gearshift very possibly could’ve smashed up that long snooty nose of Nesta’s, but the windshield was exploding above them and Zlatan really thought that there were more appropriate reactions. Like getting them out of there.

The hail of bullets went on too long to be anything but a tommy-gun, which was just great since all Zlatan had was one pistol. He squeezed back into his seat, keeping his head down—a couple bullets creased his back anyway—and drew that, then sighed. Then he rammed himself out the left door, shooting as he went.

By the time he’d rolled back onto his feet, somebody was trying to hit him with a crowbar. He threw his shoulder into their legs and they went down, but when he aimed his gun and pulled the trigger, all he heard was a sharp _click_ : no bullets. Zlatan swore.

The idiot began to laugh and Zlatan smashed in his nose with the butt of the pistol. Then he dropped his knee on the man’s stomach to hold him in place, grabbed the idiot’s hair and twisted his neck around. No more laughing, and at least the jerk was carrying a pair of semiautomatic pistols, which Zlatan gladly appropriated.

He looked up and the car hadn’t moved, but the tommy-gun guy had. No blood was splattered up against the windows, so Zlatan was hoping that that meant Nesta and Buffon had managed to wriggle out the other side. If they hadn’t—he spun around and shot, then spun a quarter of the way back and shot again. But neither of them had the tommy-gun, and God, now he was mad. If those two moronic Italians had gone after him themselves, when Zlatan knew damn well they weren’t carrying anything bigger than a pistol…

A burst of gunfire came from outside and Zlatan ran that way, ducking beneath the half-open garage door. He saw somebody dropping behind a huddle of trashcans, then turned and spotted white flashes down the alley. So he went that way and was just jumping a discarded hubcap when somebody stood up into his feet.

At least, that was what he figured had happened, when he was thinking about it after the fight. Right then all he knew was that he’d been knocked off-balance and had ripped up his sleeve to the elbow plus badly cracked his knee in breaking his fall. But he didn’t waste time on how much that hurt and instead swung himself about to dive for the first metallic gleam he saw. Once the gun was pinned down, then he looked at who was holding it and found himself staring into Buffon’s furious eyes. “Ibra—”

Rattling pebble behind Zlatan. He didn’t want to make the same mistake twice so he yanked them both aside, kicking up the hubcap as he went for a distraction. A bullet pinged off it into the ground about an inch from Zlatan’s head, so then he figured it was okay to shoot. And he did, the moment the hubcap dropped out of the way. “Where’s Nesta?”

“Let go of my hand,” Buffon snarled, pulling that away. He fell forward onto his elbows; his other arm was clutched to his stomach out of sight, but there was a puddle beneath him. Then he rolled over and shot somebody, and normally Zlatan would’ve been impressed since he did it on his back, except now Zlatan could see that the puddle was blood. “Nesta’s still chasing.”

“Jesus Christ.” Zlatan whipped his gaze about as he dropped to a knee beside the other man. He reached out and Buffon swung the gun towards him; Zlatan hit that away and pulled at Buffon’s shirt till he was sure the blood was coming from Buffon’s arm and not anywhere in the man’s gut. “Oh, good, you can wait. Be right back.”

For some reason Buffon didn’t look very happy about that, but Zlatan didn’t think too much about it as he ran off again. He quickly tracked the noise down to a little dead-end off-shoot passage, and just as he stepped into it, the rattling gunfire died away. Zlatan hissed and threw himself against the wall, feeling cold all over all of a sudden.

Actually, he should’ve known that Nesta was too much of a son of a bitch to go down: it turned out Nesta had just put a bullet through the tommy-gun man’s head. Immediately afterward Nesta ducked to yank the gun free of the dead man’s hands. Then he started to stand, but abruptly stiffened.

Rolling his eyes, Zlatan flung himself forward and managed to get past the tommy-gun and trap it against his side just as Nesta had finished spinning about, nostrils flared and eyes wide and raging. They stared at each other, the harshness of their breathing amplified by the alley walls.

Then Zlatan jerked up the gun’s muzzle and Nesta reflexively pulled the trigger. He finally blinked, then looked past Zlatan as if the corpse he’d just made behind them was the strangest thing in the world. “Where the hell have you been? Gigi got shot while you were getting yourself out of the car.”

Zlatan…stared. “I was busy killing the men in the garage who set us up! If I hadn’t done that, we’ve have gotten stuck in the crossfire and…and you know what, forget this. I’m going to go see how _Buffon_ is doing.”

He let go of the tommy-gun and spun on his heel, then marched off with an offended air that probably made Nesta jealous, hence why he pointedly ran past Zlatan. At first Zlatan was going to let him go, because maybe Nesta had to be that much of a brat but…but the distant wail of sirens made Zlatan curse and hurry to catch up instead. They were in neutral territory—well, actually, it clearly wasn’t that anymore, but at any rate, they couldn’t count on friendly cops.

Buffon was on his feet and Nesta had already gotten his arm wrapped up with strips torn from his bloody sleeve, but he looked pale. And their car was all fucking shot up. “So much for the truce. Paolo’s got to hear about this,” Buffon said.

“ _First_ we are getting out of here. Then I’ll call him and tell him it was a stupid idea,” Nesta muttered. He started to stalk off like he knew where he was going, but he didn’t or he realized he no longer did. Then he came back, walked past them a couple feet, and then he spun violently about. “Damn it. What’s near here? I haven’t been this way in over four months.”

“I know a place,” Zlatan said. He fought down his urge to smack those dubious looks off their faces. “It’s got a phone, and we can get help for that arm too without going to a hospital. And what, do you want to go to jail or what? We need to go!”

Nesta finally stopped pacing around, but it was to stick his nose at Zlatan like he thought it was a stiletto, so it wasn’t that much of an improvement. “I’m tired of fights starting wherever you go. If anything even smells wrong, we’re leaving. With your head as a gift to Paolo.”

It was too difficult to decide whether to roll his eyes again or to hit the snarling bastard, so Zlatan pulled a straight face. “Okay, _fine_. Now can we _go_?”

Buffon and Nesta looked at each other. The sirens got louder. Buffon did some eyebrow-quirking, Nesta snorted, and then they turned to glower at him again. Which Zlatan was going to take as a yes only because he wanted to get out of there. 

“Jesus. Good thing I haven’t gotten shot yet. With the way you go on, you’d probably chop off the limb and then tell me you’re taking it out of my paycheck,” Zlatan muttered, waving them forward. “What the hell does it take to convince you?”

“Well, you could stop thinking that fucking Camoranesi will do the trick. That slut does it for anyone who can hold him down long enough.” Nesta didn’t appear to see the dirty look Buffon shot him. “And leave Gila alone.”

Zlatan heaved a sigh, then broke into a jog as they neared the first turn. “Look, I don’t do anything I’m not asked for. And if he’s asking me, then…”

“Even if I believed that he were asking you, I wouldn’t think he’d know what he was asking for,” Buffon snapped after him.

“Which I guess is why you can’t keep him from asking, right?” Zlatan called back. He was just saying it, not really thinking about it because the longest exchange he’d had with Gilardino since that bathroom fuck had been asking him who was cooking breakfast on Wednesday morning. And Mauro had been keeping plenty of time with Zlatan, so it wasn’t like he was missing anything.

But it looked like he’d hit a sore spot, since Buffon reared up and almost looked like he was about to start another fight then and there. Then he seemed to realize how much of his dignity was flapping out in the wind and he settled back to be stoically grey-faced.

“Where are we going?” Nesta snapped, glaring at them both. He just never was happy with anybody.

* * *

Zlatan did think, however, that Nesta had a pretty nice stunned face, and openly enjoyed it as the other man stared about the place with his mouth slightly open. He started when a woman bumped him as she hurried down the narrow corridors, then stumbled as they started up a rickety skeleton flight of stairs. “Ballerinas. We’re hiding with a bunch of _ballerinas_.”

“Hey. Firstly, they’re risking a hell of a lot letting us in, so be grateful. Secondly, have you ever actually met one before this? Their legs are probably stronger than yours, so watch your mouth or they’ll kick out your teeth,” Zlatan said, bounding up ahead. He stopped at the top of the stairs to grab one of the girls, then stopped her in the middle of her delighted squeal-and-kiss attempt. “Sorry, Alena, but no time for that. My friend’s shot up, and if Helena—”

“Marta! Get the surgery kit!” Alena bellowed, immediately leaning over the rail. Then she drew herself up and turned towards Buffon and Nesta to see which one needed it. Her eyes got stuck on Buffon, but judging from the glint that came into her eyes, not because he was the bloody one. “Oh…well, I’m really sorry to hear about that, but we’ll fix you up. You want anything to eat, drink…”

And Buffon was looking slightly more perky, which made Zlatan wish he’d opted for Henrik’s warehouse instead. But Henrik wasn’t even in the country, and that was farther, and anyway he’d promised to…well, Buffon annoyed him anyway. Nothing new. “Helena? Is she in?”

“Oh, no, not yet.” At least Alena had the sense to pick up on Zlatan’s annoyance and give all her attention to him again. “Another hour and a half. She’s stuck in a meeting at the Waldorf. You wanna give her a ring?”

“No, but my other friend here does need the phone,” Zlatan said, pulling Nesta forward. Then he dropped his hand fast so Nesta looked like an idiot, trying to elbow at thin air. “We need to lay low maybe overnight, too. Where can you put us?”

Alena blinked, then put a finger to her lips and thought. “Damn. We’ve got a dress rehearsal in fifteen minutes and then a different one in two hours…um, take the guest greenroom for now. You might have to move later, but…”

“Thanks, baby.” Zlatan kissed her cheek, then shoved Nesta off towards the phone and started walking Buffon down the hall.

He ignored the way Buffon stared at Alena’s retreating ass till they were safely in the greenroom. And then he had to ignore it a little longer, since right then Marta showed up with the surgery kit and they had to patch up Buffon. Who suddenly decided to relax and be all charming with Marta till Zlatan was longingly staring at the vodka she’d also brought for Buffon “for medicine.” Luckily it was a straightforward wound, the bullet passing clean through and not hitting anything major, and so it didn’t take too long to stitch it up.

Zlatan walked Marta to the door, catching up on the news, but the moment she was in the hall, he did tap her on the shoulder. “Sorry if he was rude. He’s a jerk, I know.”

“He was very nice, actually,” Marta said. She paused, looking at Zlatan with her head cocked, and then smiled. “Aw, I know when a man shows me diamonds and when he shows me paste. But I can still say the glitter is pretty, yes?”

“I guess. Just don’t try and take it to the pawnshop,” Zlatan muttered. They pecked each other on the cheek before he reluctantly went back inside.

Buffon had pulled himself up to sitting on the couch and was now sprawling his legs so they nearly stretched all the way across the small room. He’d also picked up the vodka and was taking a healthy drink from it; his eyes flicked over to Zlatan, then stayed there as he lowered the bottle. “You seem very friendly with all of them. I thought you’ve been saying you didn’t know anybody in New York, that this was your first time here.”

“First time in your part of the city. And hey, I can make friends in other places and then meet up with them again when they come here, can’t I? The girls usually tour Europe, but they’re over here this year. Sell-out for the whole run.” Unfortunately the couch was pretty much the only piece of furniture meant for sitting in the whole room. There was a stool for the dressing-table, but when Zlatan looked at it he found it had a severe wobble, and the dressing-table itself was too short to really accommodate him. “I’m a friendly person.”

“So I’ve noticed,” Buffon drawled. He put down the bottle on the couch-arm and stared up at Zlatan as if he were meditating on how best to dismantle Zlatan. And with his arm swathed in bandages and no shirt and a lingering ashy tone to his face.

Zlatan was just considering clocking him with the stool—Buffon did need the rest—when the door opened and Nesta came in. He stomped to the halfway point of the room before stopping and frowning about, clearly mad that the space wasn’t big enough for a proper angry stalk. Then he spotted the vodka and irritably took it away from Buffon. “You shouldn’t be drinking that when you’re injured.”

“Ah, so Maldini wasn’t happy with your conclusions.” Buffon obviously wasn’t impressed with Nesta’s lame attempt at showing concern. “I told you they weren’t Dutch Schultz’s men.”

“Maybe not his regulars, but that doesn’t mean he couldn’t have hired some of those gat-happy Irish,” Nesta snapped. He kicked the door shut, then jerked at his tie as if the poor thing had said something mean about his mother. When that finally came off, he tossed it at the couch, and then followed it up with his coat. In the middle of that he also took a swig of vodka, and Zlatan didn’t think Nesta had bothered wiping off the rim first. “Mancini only comes up as a possibility because of what you did at Christmas last year.”

Unimpressed with Nesta’s enraged stripping, Buffon delicately flicked the coat and tie to the floor. “Well, Zlatan? Did you recognize any of those men?”

Zlatan leaned against the dressing-table, bemusedly watching. “No.”

Nesta continued to glare at Buffon. “Did Van Basten or Dutch Schultz ever contract out to other gangs?”

“All the time. Come on, that’s pretty standard practice,” Zlatan said.

Eyebrows pointedly raised, Nesta dropped his back against the door so it rattled and drank more vodka. It was entirely possible he didn’t know what was going down his throat, given his air of extreme frustration. “There’s no reason why Mancini would want me dead. You, all right, but—”

“He and Zlatan did have an interesting conversation the other night,” Buffon abruptly said. He pursed his lips like a cow chewing cud.

Well, now Zlatan wished he didn’t have both of them between him and the door. “Hey, look, leave me out of this. It’s your bickering, and besides, that whole talk with Mancini? I was telling him playing nice is a _good_ idea.”

“And why is that so ridiculous that I just want to laugh?” Nesta said, suddenly pushing off the door. He came towards Zlatan with a strangely exaggerated swagger to his walk, more sashay than stalk, that was completely at odds with his flashing eyes. “You? Telling anybody to be nice? The only reason why you’re here is because you’re taking advantage of a manpower shortage because of a turf war!”

Zlatan opened his mouth to reply, then frowned as a familiar smell reached him. “Who had the whiskey?”

“And you oh-so- _conveniently_ \--” Nesta threw out his arms, sloshed vodka out over his hand and unbalanced himself so he had to twist in place to stay standing “—know all these nice people! You have these ballerinas who’ll feed you and hand you drinks! You’re always around! You keep saving people!”

“I don’t ‘have’ them—they’re friends. Also, aren’t you basically saying that Gilardino is a liar, since he told you about Mancini?” Zlatan absently said, more preoccupied with Nesta’s increasingly bizarre behavior. He was beginning to wonder if this was the moment where Nesta finally lost control and all that stoked-up rage exploded; he’d been looking forward to that, but now that it seemed like an imminent event, he was thinking he should have specified watching it from farther away. “And you’re very fucking welcome. My God, if you didn’t have my help, you would’ve all gone under two weeks ago.”

Nesta splashed more vodka about as he spun about to face Zlatan, his arms still out and his head slightly down, like he was about to lunge at Zlatan boogeyman-style. “I know! Why do you think I’m so upset, you fucking moron!”

Buffon slowly rose and plucked the vodka bottle from Nesta’s hand. “Sandro, you’re drunk.”

Nesta very, very gradually shifted to look at him.

And, in a truly mature and sober manner, Buffon tossed back a good three shots’ worth of vodka at once. “And Alberto is not a liar.”

“Gila isn’t a liar but I knew you’d say that. You’re not any better—actually, he _is_ better than you,” Nesta snarled, lip curled. His finger stabbed at Zlatan. “He at least figured out that Gila’s been dying for _somebody_ to show him a good time and did that, and goddamn it, Gigi. Why did you let fucking Ibrahimović beat you to that? It makes us look bad.”

“Because I actually give a shit about Alberto? Aside from how he fills out the shift schedule?”

“I care about Gila. I care about him enough to put up with you because he likes you, even though you’re a pompous overbearing asshole who thinks he knows the right way to do everything.”

“Ah, have I turned into a mirror?”

Zlatan raised his hand. “I think you’re both drunk.”

“Shut up, Zlatan. Nobody asked you.” Nesta teetered forward a step, his arms flopping about as he fought against his body’s very sensible suggestion to lie down quickly. “Paolo says that Mancini is all right now, and—”

“Paolo also says that we have to work with—”

Before Buffon, who also was beginning to look unsteady, could hook his thumb at him, Zlatan quickly stepped forward and took away the vodka. But that didn’t even earn him much of a glower, as Nesta completely failed to notice and instead went on about whatever Buffon had done at Christmas, and Buffon responded with something about Nesta’s absurd trust in Paolo’s judgment, and Zlatan really wasn’t amused anymore.

He stuffed the vodka behind the dressing-table mirror, then came back just in time to grab Nesta about the waist as the other man reached for Buffon. “Hey! He just got stitches!”

“And he can get some more in his fucking _mouth_ \--” First Nesta’s elbows banged into Zlatan’s sides and cheek and then the bastard jabbed his heels up and down Zlatan’s shins. Then he grabbed onto Zlatan’s wrists and tried to twist around, swearing and spitting in a mix of Italian and English. “Get off, Ibrahee—him—why the hell is your name so long?”

“Why do you pick at everything about me?” Zlatan sighed, dragging Nesta backwards. He glowered himself as Buffon smirked and sat back down with lazy deliberation.

Nesta attempted to slam the side of his head into Zlatan’s nose, and when that failed, snapped his teeth just short of Zlatan’s ear. The man apparently didn’t explode so much as turn into a wet housecat. “Because everything about you is wrong! You’re—you’re too tall, and your nose is huge but it looks good on you, and you kill everybody and you’re a fucking smartmouth, and you saved Paolo and he likes you now and you keep fucking _Camoranesi_ , of all people, and you—you—you fucking _bastard_.”

And then, on the tail end of that gushing flood of viciousness, Nesta wrenched about and banged his mouth into Zlatan’s mouth. Zlatan stumbled backwards, not wanting his lip bit off but not wanting to let go and find out what else Nesta might try to bite off, and hit the wall and ended up awkwardly falling. In the background, Buffon was laughing.

Currently squirming all over Zlatan’s abused knees, throwing elbows all over the place, Nesta was not in fact trying to bite Zlatan. His teeth were mashed against Zlatan’s lips, but that was very much beside the point of what the rest of his mouth was trying to do, all hot and hungry and…pushy. Even kissing, Nesta couldn’t get over his temper. All Zlatan did was shove at him to get some air, and then Nesta was jamming a knee down between Zlatan’s legs while his hands raked down Zlatan’s chest, scratching through Zlatan’s coat _and_ shirt to leave burning trails in their wake. Zlatan grabbed Nesta by the shoulders and Nesta twisted his head sideways to nearly suck Zlatan’s tongue in to the root, fingers roughly kneading up Zlatan’s shirt. Then Nesta jerked his mouth off, ducked down and came back up with a long, wriggling lick at the underside of Zlatan’s jaw, and Zlatan accidentally pushed the other man down so Nesta ended up astride his thigh, still cursing in between his moans.

“You hopeless prig,” Buffon snickered. “I knew you were complaining too much about him.”

“Fuck off, Buffon. Come back when you’ve got the balls to tell Gilardino off. ‘not like he’s easy to break,” Zlatan mumbled. He also tried to get in a nasty look at the other man, but Nesta was starting to settle in place and his hair was frizzing out in a wild haze about his head. The silky thin strands were also sticking to Zlatan’s cheeks and across his nose so they tickled badly every time he inhaled. Well, every time Nesta let him inhale, and Zlatan wasn’t quite sure why the other man was still trying to make his tongue a permanent part of Zlatan’s mouth. “Nesta. Nesta, damn it—God, what’d they give you? Rotgut?”

Nesta finally let Zlatan jerk him back, but it became clear why a moment later, when suddenly buttons were pinging all over the place and Nesta was pushing the halves of Zlatan’s shirt aside to lick and suck his way down Zlatan’s—if this wasn’t fucking saintliness, Zlatan thought, then Figo could stuff his Church up his ass. And then Zlatan grabbed Nesta’s wrists before the same treatment could be applied to his trousers, twisting them out to the sides. Even with vodka and whiskey coursing through his veins, Nesta should’ve been able to feel that.

“Fuck off yourself. And if you touch Alberto again, I’ll break you in two,” Buffon was saying. He was attempting to get off the couch sideways, his elbows and knees bending outwards in a strange spider-like motion. Maybe he was getting his up and his right confused. “Camoranesi’s old enough to be an idiot if he wants, but—”

“Gila’s twenty-five, you stuck-up camel,” Nesta said, slowly raising his head. He sounded a good deal less angry than before, but the half-lidded look he was giving Zlatan didn’t lack for heat. A gleaming thread of spittle tracked from the left corner of his mouth over the line of his jaw and he stuck his tongue out over it, then lazily swiped it away with an unnecessary extra curl to bring his tongue back into his mouth. The whole time he was staring straight at Zlatan. “And you, you annoy the hell out of me. I keep wanting to drag you off to fuck and it’s _distracting_ , you overgrown shit. I have better things to do.”

Zlatan opened his mouth. Closed it. Wanted to hit Nesta just for making him _speechless_ , which hadn’t happened since Helena had proposed to him. “Of course you do. Like getting completely washed under. So how about you get off me, and then I’ll go and ask the girls for some gin, and…”

Nesta rolled his eyes and the rest of his head began to roll with them. Then it abruptly dropped and for one second Zlatan thought the other man had passed out. And then Nesta’s tongue was dancing over his right pectoral, and he definitely wasn’t thinking that anymore. “No. Hah. I refuse to listen to you.”

Now Buffon was mostly off the couch, but he still hadn’t gotten his directions straight so he promptly fell to one knee. Something thumped somewhere behind him and he grimaced, then flopped awkwardly about to cradle his bandaged arm to himself. “I refuse to watch your idiotic idea of foreplay, Nesta. Honestly, it’s a wonder Maldini ever got you into and out of bed in one piece…”

“Don’t do that!” Zlatan yelped. He shoved Nesta’s mouth off his nipple just as the teeth started to close down, then seized the other man’s wrists again and twisted them up behind Nesta’s back. “Look, fine, you don’t like me. _You don’t like me_. You don’t want to do that.”

Nesta seemed genuinely confused this time. He blinked a few times, sucked at his lower lip like it was made of chocolate, and then tried to lean forward. Zlatan pointedly shook him and Nesta stopped, narrowing his eyes so his gaze would’ve been relentlessly scrutinizing if it hadn’t been so unfocused. “What? You’re too chicken to go for the hard target?”

“Stop _insulting Alberto_ ,” Buffon snarled. His arm must not have been too badly banged-up, since he’d resumed crawling across the floor. He was going towards the dressing-table—the vodka.

“You just ripped open my shirt and went at me like I was made of sugar. I don’t think that makes you a hard target anymore.” Zlatan stared at Nesta, then cursed and belatedly tightened his grip as the other man almost sneaked out of it. “And I can’t believe you just said that.”

After another puzzled moment, Nesta snorted and tossed his head. His hair tangled into his face, the strands twisted into damp ripples. “You just think I’m going to bite you.”

“You _did_ bite me.”

Nesta flexed his arms, pulling hard at Zlatan’s hands, and then suddenly relaxed so he swayed to nearly put his mouth against Zlatan’s jaw. “I know, and I want to do it again. Come on. You scared?” he whispered, soft and sweet. His black eyes were shining, like heat-shimmers off the streets in summer. “I like how you taste. You’re annoying, but I like biting you.”

Well, when Nesta put it like that, Zlatan didn’t think he could be blamed for momentarily forgetting what he was doing. And a moment later, when he did remember, he had his hands gripping Nesta’s ass and Nesta had his palms flat against Zlatan’s ribs, fingers splayed, and his mouth messily overlapping Zlatan’s as he teased and nibbled at Zlatan’s lower lip. As he finally bit down on that, he arched his shoulder and his suspender slipped off it. The elastic immediately slid down his arm to pull it against his side, his shirt-sleeve sticking in translucent wet patches behind it as the sweat soaked into the fabric.

Zlatan hissed and dragged the other man closer, pressing his hand up Nesta’s back as Nesta squirmed and sighed, sliding his fingers beneath the other suspender. He worked it over the back of his hand, then tugged at Nesta’s arms till the other man let go of him and he could slide both suspenders off. Then he let his hand drop along with the loops, but where they fell slack over Nesta’s hips, he tightly curved his palm against the other man’s waist. Nesta groaned and twisted up into the touch, his mouth sliding down to apply itself to Zlatan’s neck, and over the top of his head Zlatan and Buffon’s gazes accidentally coincided.

Buffon had never made it to the vodka bottle, instead collapsing back against the wall to stare long and hard at Zlatan and Nesta. His mouth was slightly open and he’d drawn up his legs to varying degrees before letting his knees sprawl open so Zlatan could see just how uninterested he was. When Buffon realized Zlatan was looking, he didn’t close his mouth but he did raise his eyebrows. “So are you going to get him undressed any time soon?”

Nesta mumbled something insulting back and reached for Zlatan’s fly, and Zlatan reflexively intercepted the hand. Then he looked down, frowning, and Nesta almost made him let go with that tongue in his ear, but Buffon harrumphed and Zlatan couldn’t exactly ignore him, or what he reminded Zlatan about, or…Zlatan grabbed at Nesta’s other hand and dragged it away. He ignored Nesta’s cursing and forced the man’s arms back, then scooted himself out and got up into a crouch so he could hold Nesta down on the floor.

“What the hell are you doing? He looks better the other way,” Buffon complained. “You’re just as lousy at this as he is.”

“Shut the fuck up, you fucking drunk. Jesus.” Zlatan absently raked his hair back with his hand and Nesta nearly bucked his head up into Zlatan’s groin. Yelping, Zlatan hopped backwards. Then he quickly dove forward again and pinned Nesta down before the other man could actually make a grab for him. “Wait. Look. Stop.”

“What is that, the three-step Zlatan plan for stupidity?” Nesta snapped. But weakly, and his attempts to lever Zlatan off of him didn’t amount to much more than some wiggling and his head moving up and down. His frustration was still alive and well, but it looked like the alcohol was catching up to him. “No. Get back here.”

This time Zlatan tossed his head, but his hair still stuck in front of his eyes. He gritted his teeth and tried to ignore how much it itched. “No. Goddamn it, Nesta, you’re drunk and you don’t like me. When you wake up you’ll want to kill me.”

“I _already_ want to kill you.” The extravagant eye-roll took Nesta’s head back onto the floor, and then Nesta didn’t lift it as he continued to mumble, his feet restlessly digging their heels at the floor.

“I know, and…and this just is a lousy idea. Just take a nap. I’ll wake you up when we can leave,” Zlatan sighed. He shifted so he was further over Nesta and the other man briefly perked up, but that went away when Nesta realized Zlatan was just improving his grip.

For a moment Nesta stared up in open disappointment. Not his usual kind, where he was already so bitter that the nasty surprise just annoyed him with its regularity, but with the simple hurt of a little boy denied Christmas.

Then the snarling veil dropped over it and Nesta brusquely jerked himself free—Zlatan didn’t really try to hold him—before rolling onto his side, his stiff back to Zlatan. He moved a little too quickly and hit his head hard on the floor; Zlatan instinctively reached out, but before his hand got anywhere near Nesta, Nesta had pointedly scooted away. Only a few inches, but still…

“Well, be like that. And I thought you were older than me,” Zlatan muttered. He got up and made one desultory attempt to fix his shirt before he just left it to hang however it liked.

Buffon watched him come over with a contemptuous mask that mostly obscured whatever it was that was really in his eyes. “That was very nice of you. So you do have some restraint.”

“Oh, go to hell.” Thankfully, he didn’t fight back when Zlatan reached for him, so Zlatan wasn’t tempted. Too much—he still ended up chewing his lip as he roughly made sure that Buffon’s stitches hadn’t pulled out.

A thumbnail-sized spot of blood had appeared on the bandages. It was already dark red, but Zlatan went ahead and unwrapped Buffon’s arm to check anyway. When he was sure it wasn’t serious, he did up all the wrappings again. He had to put down his knee and squeeze it behind Buffon’s back to get the other man to lean forward so he could do that, since Buffon wasn’t doing a damn thing except staring at him. And then Zlatan let go of his arm and _then_ Buffon leaned forward so his mouth grazed the side of Zlatan’s jaw.

Zlatan froze.

Buffon didn’t. His mouth pressed down harder, then opened as he worked it around a raw scrape Nesta’s teeth had left. Then he bent forward a little further, his forelock sweeping across Zlatan’s eyebrow. He put his hand on Zlatan’s shoulder, pressed down, and then shifted it to Zlatan’s elbow. His mouth slid over Zlatan’s and Zlatan put his hand up around the back of Buffon’s head; Buffon started, then sank forward before the pressure of Zlatan’s hand.

Even drunk, he was methodical. He went from right to up to left to down and then in, and once he had his bearings he suddenly ramped it up so Zlatan ended up holding onto Buffon’s head with both hands to keep some sense of orientation himself. He found himself quickly short of breath again, but heard and felt Buffon chuckle, and that irked him out of his temporary daze. It wasn’t like Buffon knew every damn trick in the book and Zlatan could prove it. In spades.

And he did. He got off his knee and pushed the other man back against the wall, and then while Buffon was still gloating over his so-called mastery of the mouth, Zlatan sneaked his hands in between them and proved it wasn’t all about that. In pretty short order, he’d gotten Buffon’s chest and stomach and sides mapped out, all their weak spots located, and he put that knowledge to good use without any of Buffon’s slow deliberation. _He_ grinned when he felt Buffon’s fingers sink into his upper arm, Buffon’s startled gasp.

Of course, then he had to stop, and surprisingly enough, he wasn’t much happier about that than he’d been about Nesta. Sometimes his job was the fucking pits. “Okay, you got your fill?”

“No,” Buffon snapped. He threw his head back against the wall and looked annoyed to almost Nesta proportions. “What kind of tease are you, anyway? What did you do that had Alberto looking so…so…”

“Satisfied?” Zlatan smiled wide and bright at him. “Ask him and have him show you.”

Buffon actually tried to slap him. The move was telegraphed well in advance, but still—it touched off Zlatan’s temper. He smacked Buffon’s hand back, then slammed it down against the floor and watched Buffon blanch and hiss for a good ten seconds before remembering about the man’s arm. Not that Buffon, to his credit, brought it up or even looked that way.

“Look, Gilardino was fun. You should try him sometime and find out for yourself. But that’s all it was—fun. Same with Mauro. I’m not stupid, and I’m not about to get into something serious,” Zlatan said. He sat back on his heels and let Buffon react to that, and then he got up and pulled up Buffon’s good arm. After getting it over his shoulders, he helped the other man up and started moving them towards the sofa. “You don’t shit where you sleep, you know?”

“We’re not talking about shitting,” Buffon muttered. He began to sit down, but at the last moment he hooked his arm over Zlatan’s neck and dragged Zlatan down with him. Their mouths jarred together and Buffon immediately tried to make that an airtight seal, but couldn’t help breaking it to hiss when Zlatan bit him. He still managed to keep hold of Zlatan’s arm. “I’ve been keeping an eye on you and whatever your reasons for being here, you’re too good to not use. This could help you.”

Zlatan paused and Buffon slid his hand invitingly down Zlatan’s arm, then twisted it to lace his fingers through Zlatan’s. He pulled both their hands to his belly, then lower as his head dropped onto Zlatan’s shoulder. His fingers molded Zlatan’s palm to his erection while his thumb traced circles around Zlatan’s knuckles.

“Thanks for giving me such a straight opinion of what I’m worth,” Zlatan finally said, drawling out the viciousness of his words. “That’s a really convin—”

Buffon kissed him again, long and melting, and pushed his cock urgently up into Zlatan’s hand. The moment Zlatan tried to pull away, Buffon made a low needy groan in his throat and stretched up as far as he could to keep their mouths together. His hips were moving much more quickly now, shaking the couch so Zlatan wondered if Nesta could hear. And then Buffon nearly jerked himself off the couch and Zlatan swore and caught him. A warm, pleading mouth slid up the side of Zlatan’s neck, nearly making Zlatan let go, and then Zlatan finally got Buffon back on the couch and Buffon spread his legs, desperately arching towards Zlatan.

After a moment, Zlatan snarled and reached down. He jerked open Buffon’s fly, then drew out the other man’s prick—Buffon stroked his fingers over and over across the back of Zlatan’s neck—and brought Buffon off while fiercely biting the inside of his mouth.

He did wait for Buffon to finish shuddering before he slapped his fingers clean against the other man’s thigh, but no more than that before he twisted away, back towards Nesta. Buffon was still gasping as Zlatan knelt down and gingerly touched Nesta’s shoulder.

Nesta didn’t move. Frowning, Zlatan turned him over and then sighed as Nesta’s snore delivered a blast of whiskey-breath right into his face. “Jesus Christ. What an ass.”

“But…Maldini…” Buffon said.

“Once, and that was to persuade him I really was switching sides.” After arranging Nesta more comfortable, Zlatan retrieved the man’s suit-jacket and laid it over him. Then he stripped off his own and held it out to Buffon, who took it with obvious reluctance. “I don’t want trouble with him or either of you, all right? I just want my paycheck. Maybe some entertainment on the weekends, but that’s about it. I like things simple.”

It seemed like Buffon was going to argue, but then he shut his mouth and sat back, that familiar look of thoughtful disdain back on his face. He began to tidy himself up, still gazing questioningly at Zlatan.

Somebody knocked at the door and Zlatan went for that with a Hail Mary thanks on his lips. He ripped open the door, then belatedly slumped against the frame to block out the rest of the room. “Yeah?”

Alena’s eyes went down, then up again. “Helena’s here. You…can you see her now?”

“Yeah, yeah…look, don’t let anybody in there till I get back. They’re sleeping. Very deeply. They’re tired,” Zlatan mumbled, squeezing out of the room. He looked down at himself, grimaced, and then set his jaw and started off down the hall.

* * *

Halfway to Helena’s office, Alice and Marta and a few other girls dragged Zlatan into a side-room. One of them had dug up a spare shirt for him, and they all were experts in quick-fixing appearances so in short order he was in the office without looking like…

“You fucked two of them at once?” Helena shut the door behind her as she came in, impeccably dressed in a slim-tailored suit and skirt set. She took off her hat and set it on the desk, then leaned against that as she unhooked her glove-buttons. “Zlatan, you’re setting a horrible example for my girls.”

“I _didn’t_ , actually.” Zlatan turned away from the window and pressed his shoulders against the wall to the left of that, his hands in his pockets. “Well, all right. I gave Buffon—the taller one—a hand. But that was it. And _your girls_ got them drunk in the first place. It was like our fucking wedding all over again.”

Helena coolly cocked an eyebrow. Her gloves dropped to the desk.

“Sorry, I meant the first time we tried to get married. You know, with the spiked punch I accidentally took from Henke’s—”

“Well, these two are a significant improvement over Ljungberg and Mellberg. If you had fucked them, I’d be applauding you,” Helena said, beginning to smile. She reached up and started to tease the pins out of her soft blonde hair. “But since you didn’t, I have to ask: do you need to head back to Europe already?”

Zlatan rolled his eyes. “Van Basten, Van der Vaart, the Italians, even Figo…and now you. Why does everyone assume I’m fucking up? I mean, you at least should know I’ve usually got it completely under control.”

“It’s just a question, Zlatan.” A long curling lock fell along the left side of Helena’s face, perfectly accenting the wicked smile that appeared next on that. “And also they were very pretty and you didn’t fuck them. I’m worried.”

“Maybe I’m trying to save something for my wife,” Zlatan snorted.

They looked at each other. Then Helena ducked away and Zlatan laughed, pushing himself off the wall. He rounded the desk and began to help take down her hair, occasionally pausing to sniff at the traces of perfume in the strands.

“Nah, it’s just part of the job. I wish I could…you think Nesta’s pretty, you should see the way he mauls—oh, wait, you can. All these bites and bruises? All him.” Zlatan paused as Helena leaned back into him, then slowly let out his breath. “So how’s it going? You and New York getting along?”

“New York and I are getting very well acquainted,” Helena sighed, sliding up against Zlatan. Her hands slowly dropped, drifting over his that were still working in her hair before swinging down and around to grab his legs. “I’m a bit surprised how well, actually. I think I wouldn’t mind coming back next year, too. Milan’s getting…”

“…predictable,” Zlatan finished. He flicked the last pin onto the desk, then spanned her waist with his hands and slowly turned her around. “Lucky you. I’m getting shot at when I’m not fending off…maybe all the interesting Italians ended up here. Because I definitely haven’t been bored. Damn it.”

Helena glanced down between them, then pushed herself up to sit on the desk so she could get her arms around Zlatan’s neck. “So I see. Well, I think I can help with that if you can promise me French champagne for the private showing in Albany next week.”

* * *

“Thank you, but no. I’d love to stay for dinner, but ballet companies don’t run themselves,” Helena said. She smiled graciously as Paolo tendered his regrets, then turned towards Zlatan.

Nesta slouched against the doorway, face pinched up around his nose like somebody had screwed that on too tight. “No, I suppose they require a good deal of _hands-on_ involvement,” he muttered. “I had no idea you were such a patron of the arts, Ibrahimović.”

Zlatan paused, half-bent towards Helena. Then he looked up, past a frozen Paolo and an openly amused Buffon. “Are you calling my wife a whore?”

Buffon blinked, then glanced quickly towards Helena, but Nesta was a little slower and stared at Zlatan for a good ten seconds. “What?”

“Oh, you’ve lost your ring again!” Helena held up Zlatan’s left hand with her left so the flash of her blue diamond could be seen. “ _Zlatan_. I’m going to stop buying you good—”

She stopped when Zlatan held up the ring, then smiled and hit him gently on the arm. “I know. That’s why I don’t like getting it dirty,” he said, slipping it back on. He leaned down and pecked her on the mouth, then helped her up into the driver’s seat of her car. “Next week or week after next?”

“Week after. I’ll let you know when the schedule’s set,” Helena said, shutting the door. She started the engine, then pulled into the road so fast the squealing of the tires was still echoing in the air when her car disappeared around the corner.

“You…are married.” Now it looked like somebody might want to tighten up Nesta’s jaw, the way it was hanging. “Does she—”

Rolling his eyes, Zlatan pivoted around and began to stroll towards the house. “Helena and I have a very good, very understanding marriage. We help each other out when we can and don’t get in each other’s way if we don’t need to. It’s great. You should try it. Well, maybe not the marrying part…I’m not sure how good you’d look in a veil…”

He heard footsteps coming after him, but didn’t slow down till after he’d gotten inside. Even then he didn’t really mean to do it, but he happened to remember he was riding shotgun on a big shipment later and stopped to take off his ring to put it away for safekeeping. Then somebody’s heel cracked against the threshold and he started back, then looked up.

It was Paolo. Nesta and Buffon were nowhere in sight, and when Zlatan was done looking for them and had returned his gaze to Paolo, the other man was still working his jaw, trying not to look angry about something. “Zlatan. I want you to stop bothering people.”

Zlatan blinked a few times. “I’m not really sure what you’re talking about.”

“That wasn’t my intention when I asked you to go along with Gigi and Sandro,” Paolo said, nearly chewing the words apart. “I wanted—”

“Jesus, wait a minute here. First of all, we just got back. You don’t even know what happened, aside from our phonecalls. Don’t I get a chance to tell you about it and explain it? Second, I’m not bothering them. If anything, I’m trying hard to do the exact opposite,” Zlatan interrupted. He pushed at his forehead, then raked the hair out of his eyes. “I’m trying to make friends.”

Paolo pressed his lips together and swallowed a few times. “I want you to stop.”

“Okay…” Zlatan said after a moment. “So you want me to be horrible to everyone and have them mad at me again?”

“No.” The word was a little distorted, as if Paolo had changed it at the last moment. He started to lift his hand, then irritably yanked it down and stared about everywhere except Zlatan. Then he dropped his head into his hand, his shoulders slumping. “No…that’s not what I meant to say. Of course you should…make friends…but perhaps you could be a little more…”

The silence went on too long for something obvious like ‘discreet.’ It started to get distinctly uncomfortable, and Paolo clearly noticed that, but he seemed unable to come up with anything to break it. Instead he shifted about on his feet and flexed his hands and generally looked as if he wanted to hit himself, but knew that that was too undignified.

Zlatan tipped his head to the left, then stepped forward and reached past Paolo to shut the door. Paolo looked up as Zlatan’s arm moved past his head, opened his mouth to say something, and then closed his eyes and sagged into a groan as Zlatan kissed him, cupping his head with both hands. He pushed up his chin, then put one hand on Zlatan’s shoulder and the other on Zlatan’s chest. When Zlatan pulled away, both of them dug sharply into his flesh.

“Oh, _that_. Why the hell didn’t you say so?” Zlatan said.

Two distinct if faint stripes of red briefly appeared on Paolo’s cheekbones. He pursed his lips, then pulled his hands off Zlatan and pushed Zlatan’s hands off of him. “It’s not just that. You…you can’t act so casually about—”

“Why not? It’s not like anybody around here seems to be taking me that seriously yet, and why should I go farther than you’re going to go?” Zlatan asked. He was serious about it, and actually surprised himself by how much so.

Paolo opened his mouth. Closed it. Then he looked up at Zlatan again, his gaze strangely firm. “I see. Well, I at least expect you to treat a dinner invitation to my house with the respect it deserves. Tomorrow night. I’ll pick you up at six and Adriana expects us both at six-fifteen, so be ready.”

It was Zlatan’s turn to do a little gaping as Paolo nodded, signaling that he was done, and then calmly walked away.

“I thought I owed you dinner,” he finally said. But Paolo was already out of earshot, and Zlatan was left standing there wondering what the hell was going on. He rubbed a hand over his face, then abruptly turned and began to jog down the hall. If he showered quick enough, he could probably catch Luís at the cathedral.

* * *

Luís put down his sandwich. “What was the question again?”

“It’s not that hard, okay? I mean, to understand. Hell if I know how to answer it…which is why I’m here, and…” Zlatan suddenly realized he was rambling and suppressed a groan. He pushed the heels of his hands into his eyes, then made himself look up. “Maldini apparently is irritated because I won’t fuck him again. I pointed out—very nicely, by the way—that doing that isn’t that great for me if he’s expecting me to do nothing but wait around to fuck him. And then he invited me to dinner. With his family. My God, when Nesta finds out he’s going to…to…”

For some reason, Luís was just looking at him. No exasperation, no disbelief, no anything except maybe a mild curiosity. It was a little like talking with Henrik, except Henrik usually looked like that because he was about to pry open a box with the answer neatly packed inside it.

“…maybe not kill me. Since the last time he got mad at me, I ended up pulling his tongue out of my mouth. And by the way, that involved a lot more than just saying _no_ ,” Zlatan muttered. He rested his face on one hand and looked at Luís with his uncovered eye.

“But what’s the question?” Luís said again.

After a long moment, Zlatan dropped his hands flat on the desk and sat up. “Why the _hell_ is Maldini inviting me to dinner?”

“Well…wait. Can I ask just why you and he were arguing about…resuming coital relations?” Luís paused. “Zlatan, you understand what I just said. You just want to hear me say ‘fuck’ while I’m wearing my collar.”

“Hey, it’s not like I’m actually getting that many funny moments now. I take what I can get. And it came up because Maldini thought I’d fucked Buffon and Nesta, _except I didn’t_ so you can wipe that look off your face,” Zlatan snapped, jabbing his finger at the other man. He started rubbing at his face again with his other hand. “He was all annoyed when he caught Mauro in my bed, too.”

“You turned down Buffon _and_ Nesta? I would’ve thought that those two were—well, never mind. That’s not what you’re asking, and I am here to provide counsel. Even if usually it’s spiritual and not…damn you, I hate it when you make me do that.” And then Luís glanced upwards, muttered an apology for the language and crossed himself. He picked up his sandwich again and regarded it for a moment. Then he put it down, broke apart the halves, and began to separate its parts. “All right, now pretend—”

Zlatan pinched the bridge of his nose. “Are you about to dumb this down for me? If I know what ‘coital’ means, then I think you could be a little less bigheaded.”

“No, but it’ll work better with an illustration and all I’ve got is this sandwich. Do you want my advice or not?” Luís said. He sounded a bit snippy now.

He waited, and when Zlatan sighed and waved a hand for him to go on, picked out a small red chile. “See this? You bite into this by itself and it’ll wham you hard and burn you so fast you can’t breathe for all the water you’re pouring down your throat.”

“Which is why you don’t eat it by itself,” Zlatan said.

“Exactly. You eat it in a sandwich, with bread and tomatoes and onions and salami…” Luís’ eyes briefly glazed over “…and combined with these other things, it tastes wonderful. The heat isn’t so bad that that’s all you feel, and it also makes everything else taste sharper and better. Now, you’re the pepper, all the Italians are the rest of the sandwich, and Maldini is me as I put my lunch back together, which is like him inviting you to a family dinner.”

Which Luís did so with amazing speed, and then he promptly took a big bite from the sandwich. As he chewed, a blissful look came onto his face that, given his metaphor, made Zlatan more than a little uncomfortable. “You worry me sometimes. I think that the celibacy gets things in you all pent up and then it turns strange, like how milk goes sour.”

“And I was dumbing it down, actually,” Luís mumbled, still chewing away. He ducked Zlatan’s half-hearted attempt to throw his napkin at him. “Go buy a new suit, comb your hair, and remember to tell his wife her hair looks nice. God smiles upon the prepared, Zlatan.”

* * *

“That’s a nice tie. It’s a good color,” Paolo said, scraping the mud off his shoes. He knocked the bristle-brush clean, then offered it to Zlatan. When Zlatan turned it down, Paolo hung it back on a little hook by the front step, dusted his knees off, and got up to unlock the door. He took his hat off as he stepped over the threshold, but didn’t quite manage to reach the peg in the wall before he was roughly tackled at knee-height.

Paolo flapped his arms a bit, then regained his balance too quickly for that to have been new to him. He glanced over at Zlatan, who’d caught his hat, as he dropped down to hug his sons. Zlatan put his shoulder to the doorway and began to spin the fedora between his hands. “Thanks. I rushed right out and bought it after you invited me over.”

“You didn’t have to do that. This is supposed to be just a little home meal, and you really shouldn’t feel obliged to do anything but enjoy yourself.” A peck on each little forehead, and then Paolo rose with his tie askew, several wrinkles in his shirt and a boy on each hand. “Christian, Daniel, this is Zlatan.”

The two boys stared curiously up at Zlatan as he flicked Paolo’s hat onto the rack. Then the taller one released his father’s hand and gingerly came forward, his head nearly all the way back. “Do that again?”

“Don’t—” Paolo started.

Zlatan used a fingertip to flip the hat up and off into the air. He let it land on two fingers, briefly balancing it, before expertly spinning it so it landed on the smaller kid’s hair. That one grabbed it down so it slid past his ears and nearly blinded him, but that didn’t seem to hamper him too much as he suddenly took off, his brother close on his heels and yelling breathlessly at him to give Daddy’s hat back.

Paolo lowered his head and rubbed at his mouth, his eyebrows quirking. He turned slightly towards Zlatan, but then seemed to change his mind and instead walked after his sons, slow and casual. His welcome aside, there wasn’t any doubt whose house this was.

A slim figure moved into the bright rectangle at the end of the hall, then put up its arms on either side of the doorway to reveal a shapely figure. “Paolo?”

Adriana. She had a nice voice, melodic and a little low, and when she moved out to embrace Paolo, Zlatan could see that the rest of her lived up to the advance billing. Her greeting smile was just a touch too alluring and Paolo’s hands lingered a bit too long on her hips…which made Zlatan sigh and turn slowly on his heel to take in the rest of the place. 

Pretty subdued compared to a lot of the bootleggers, but definitely not in the cash layout needed to fund it all: fine hardwood paneling, expensive crystal lights…Alessandro Nesta pulling up short as he stepped out of the formal sitting room and nearly into Zlatan.

Nesta’s eyes did widen, but only for as long as it took him to get out of the way. He was without a tie or coat, and his sleeves were rolled to the elbows to show a faint dusting of flour on his hands. The top two buttons of his collar were undone. “Well, you tidied yourself up. I was wondering whether you’d show with lipstick on your cheek and whiskey stains on your shirt,” he muttered, walking down the hall.

Zlatan counted to ten, took a deep breath, and made himself saunter after the other man. No hurry, it smelled like a large dinner and he wasn’t getting out of there for a good while. And God, but Figo was going to suffer for talking him into this. “Oh, is that hang-over of yours still bothering you? I figured two days would be long enough—but then again, considering what happened…”

“Hello, I’m Adriana,” Paolo’s wife said. She drew away from a rather irked-looking Paolo and swiftly inserted herself between Zlatan and Nesta, who was turning sharply around. Somehow she managed to get Zlatan holding her hands, and then there wasn’t much to do but to air-kiss her cheek and hope that Paolo thought gunfights in the house were too messy. “I’ve heard a good deal about you and I’m very pleased to finally be able to thank you for helping Paolo.”

“Ah, that wasn’t that much. I was getting bored, and also I hate Dutch food,” Zlatan nonchalantly replied. He let go of her hands and slipped past Paolo, who turned a quick but unreadable look at him before rounding on Nesta.

The two of them immediately began a hissing whisper-argument that Adriana ignored as she ushered Zlatan into the kitchen, questioning him about what kind of food he did like. After a moment, he decided that her concern was genuine, but still thought something about it was a little funny; the conversation just didn’t seem to fit her languid style and aristocratic looks.

“Well, I’m sorry that dinner isn’t already on the table, but I didn’t get to the butcher’s till the afternoon rush so I was late getting home. But it should only be a few minutes.” Adriana gestured towards the other room, where Christian and Daniel were poking covertly at the shiny silverware on a great oak table, but walked towards the kitchen. On the counters were trays of freshly-made pasta, the flour still scattered about them. “Did you want anything to drink while you’re waiting?”

“No, I’m fine,” Zlatan slowly said. He took up a position by the counter, where he could still see the other two—Nesta was looking at him just then, but jerked around when he realized he was being watched—and picked up one of the trays. “Can I do anything?”

After a moment, Adriana picked up a large wooden spoon and went over to the stove, where she began checking various pots that were bubbling away on it. Her hair was twisted up into what Helena always called a ‘work-bun’ and she was wearing an apron and a pair of worn, comfortable-looking flats that didn’t match her chic outfit. “Can you bring me that and then the pepper grinder?”

Zlatan did so, then drifted back just in time to see Paolo fall back against the wall, his hands in his hair and a rare open expression of exasperation on his face. “So why didn’t you get to the butcher’s in time?”

“Oh, I had a little snag at work.” Adriana added pepper to some kind of red sauce, then began dropping ravioli into a pot of boiling water. “I actually shouldn’t call it work, since I don’t get paid for it. I help out at the Met, organizing charity dinners and that sort of thing. Usually it’s not that complicated, but we suddenly found out that we hadn’t gotten enough champagne for a ball next week.”

“Yeah, Van Basten managed to hijack a whole load in Canada and we can’t get more till next month. My wife’s annoyed—I promised her my share of that,” Zlatan commented. He dug around in his pocket, then pulled out his ring and put it on his left hand. Then he started twisting it around his finger.

When he looked over, Adriana was studying him as coolly and carefully as Paolo had ever done, and she didn’t flinch from his gaze. She didn’t look away till something on the stove loudly popped. “I think I’ve met Helena, actually. I’ve been trying to get Paolo to take me to see her company for ages now, but he’s been worrying over these troubles and then he was—taken. And so…so I’m very glad that you’re helping so much with that. I’d also like to pass on my thanks to your wife, for what she did for Gigi and Sandro the other day.”

“The next time I see her, I’ll have to ask her about that.” A noise in the hall made Zlatan glance away. “I’ll tell her what you said, too. She’ll like that. She hates it when people thank me for what she did, and that’s what they usually do.”

“I can understand that,” Adriana said rather drolly. She looked up and met Zlatan’s gaze with a slight twinkle in her eye. Then she moved over about a foot to get a bowl down from one of the cabinets. “So how long have you two been married, if I’m not being rude?”

Zlatan blinked, then shrugged. “Nah, it’s fine. Maybe a year now, but we’ve been together longer than that.”

“Maybe?”

“Ah…” God, every time Zlatan still got embarrassed, and most of that nonsense hadn’t been his fault. He scratched at the back of his head. “Well, I’m not really sure when to count from—we got married twice. The first time got interrupted and we weren’t sure if it went through with all the proper things, so we did it again. Though Helena always says I might as well count the first time, since that’s what _we_ wanted it to mean.”

A gentle chuckle came from Adriana. She spooned up the ravioli into the bowl, then lifted a heavy saucepan full of sauce and poured it over the pasta without a hint of strain. “That seems like a sensible enough approach. It’s a bit difficult sometimes to tell what’s going on, so you might as well stick to what’s meaningful and let the rest sort itself out. Paolo, Sandro, I’m putting the food on—”

At least Paolo had the good grace to abandon his arguing and come in to take the bowl from a weakly-protesting Adriana. She finally surrendered it to him, but then immediately reached for an equally large bowl of salad greens—which Zlatan had already intercepted. Finally Adriana threw up her hands and settled for the breadbasket.

“Dinner!” Christian and Daniel bounded in and Daniel nearly collided with Nesta’s leg as the other man reluctantly came out of the hall.

Nesta’s sullen expression froze, then wiped itself clear as he looked down to see what had happened. He lifted his floured hands towards his trousers, but Daniel had already rounded him to start tugging at the back of his shirt and Nesta ended up bending down to hitch the kid onto his back without dusting off his hands. He grinned at Christian, but as he straightened up, he saw Zlatan and his face went through the most bizarre contortions as he managed his conflicting reactions with about as much ease as somebody trying to hold onto a stick of butter.

In the end, Nesta gave up and walked towards the table, one happy kid on his back and another tagging along beside him, looking like he was about to carve somebody up for daring to look at Paolo too long. Apparently this wasn’t an unusual event, given how Adriana and the boys didn’t pay any mind to it. Instead they kept up a steady, friendly chatter with Paolo and sometimes Zlatan so Zlatan actually found himself enjoying the conversation.

He enjoyed their company, he realized, and so he sat down to his plate with his stomach suddenly in no condition for eating. Goddamn Luís and his goddamn sandwich metaphors.

“Are you all right?” Paolo leaned over and craned his head to look at Zlatan. He’d put Zlatan between himself and his eldest, with Adriana across from Zlatan so at least Zlatan didn’t have to put up with the way Sandro’s face scrunched up in grumpiness. “You looked green for a—”

“I’m fine. I’m fine, really. I was just—worried about Helena. She really could’ve used the champagne we were supposed to get this week, and I’m not sure what she’s going to do about that now,” Zlatan quickly said. He picked up his knife and fork and started to stick them into his food, but then realized that everyone’s eyes had gone to those instead. Fighting back a wince, he put those back down. “Oh, right, grace. Sorry, I’m not Catholic.”

Adriana somehow made her gesture dismissing without being contemptuous, though Nesta’s faint snort still had that covered. “It’s all right. Paolo, would you…”

Paolo put his elbows up and clasped his hands together beneath his slightly bowed chin, and everyone else besides Zlatan followed suit. There was a slight pause as Daniel got up on his knees on his seat in order to get his arms above the table—Nesta reached out without looking and helped him—and then Paolo murmured his way through the grace. He had his eyes closed. Nesta had his open, but wasn’t really seeing the plate in front of him. Both of them looked serious but comfortable, as if they’d grown into place or the place had grown around them, and as if they’d defend it to the death.

This was not going to plan, Zlatan thought.

* * *

“I’ll wash and you dry,” Zlatan suggested.

In reply Nesta produced a narrow-eyed, dubious stare. Then he roughly shouldered Zlatan away from the sink and knocked the faucet handle with his elbow so the water started running. “You dry.”

Zlatan looked around, then up as little feet pounded over their heads. Then he suppressed a sigh and picked up the towel from the counter. “I was trying to be nice, but fine.”

“I don’t particularly agree with your idea of ‘being nice.’” Nesta’s angry arm-pumping quickly puffed the suds past the rim of the sink so they began to spill onto the floor. Some of them got on his rolled-up sleeves and trousers, gradually popping into dark blotchy stains. “I know Paolo thinks he can turn you into a loyalist, but I’m a little more pessimistic.”

“You don’t say,” Zlatan muttered. He leaned against the counter and flicked the towel at a basket of apples to his left.

The way Nesta thrust the first bowl at him, it was like he was trying to slice Zlatan down the middle with it. “I still think you’re here to cause trouble.”

“What clued you in? The fact that I keep saving everybody? Or that I didn’t throw you down and rip off your clothes, and fuck you when you were drunk, Buffon was wounded, and I didn’t have fucking anything so you would’ve been bleeding from your ass all the way back?” Zlatan jerked the bowl away and walked off a few steps, rubbing the towel over and over it. He finally spun it out into the rack, then slapped the damp towel a few times against the counter. “Fine, you don’t like me. I think you’re a prick nearly all the time, so we’re even. But don’t get mad at me because you think you messed up somewhere. Jesus. I didn’t even mention that to anybody, and you’d better believe they were asking how the hell _you_ got stinking drunk.”

Nesta looked at him, then down at the suds vigorously bumping up and down in the sink. The other man yanked out two huge blobs of bubbles, shook the foam off to reveal more bowls, and put them down on the counter so hard that Zlatan winced.

Actually, so did Nesta, and before Zlatan could pick them up again, Nesta had snatched them away to examine them for breaks. He was lucky he didn’t find any, but of course that didn’t erase the harsh lines grooved into his forehead and around his mouth. “You might not care about a damn thing, but I do. I’m not about to let anybody wreck what we have here,” he said. He was a good bit quieter, both in volume and in tone. “Whether it’s on purpose, or just because you woke up one day and didn’t…I don’t know, think we were so _pretty_ anymore.”

“Fine.” Zlatan took the bowls from him, gave them the onceover, and then racked them up with the first. “Hey, we actually agree on something.”

“What?”

A moment later, Nesta was still standing there with that puzzled look on his face, so Zlatan helped himself to another dish from the sink. On this one he found a few flecks of food still clinging, so he nudged Nesta over and swished the plate through the soapy water again. “I fuck Camoranesi because he doesn’t care. He’s already told me he’s waiting for Fabio to get back from Chicago, or Del Piero from D. C.—whichever gets back first. I shoved you off because you would give a damn. Okay?”

Nesta didn’t answer. He didn’t start shaking with rage either, but instead turned abruptly back to the sink. For the rest of the time he scrubbed quickly and methodically, his head bowed so his hair hid his expression, and didn’t say another word to Zlatan. Which Zlatan supposed was some sort of progress, and maybe that was good. It was hard to judge when Zlatan didn’t know what the hell was going through Nesta’s head.

To be honest, eerie was what it was, and when Paolo came in and got Zlatan for the drive back, Zlatan was ridiculously glad to see him. Of course, that only lasted till they were in the car and Zlatan became uncomfortably aware of the contemplative glances Paolo kept shooting him. He also happened to realize that he’d only seen one car in the garage and it hadn’t seemed like Nesta was planning to leave any time soon. “Does Nesta take cabs or something?”

“Hmm. Oh, no, he’s staying overnight. He’ll come in with me tomorrow morning,” Paolo said. The back-glare of the headlights threw a stark triangle over part of his face, blanching it to white-gold between his jaw and his brow with his pale eye gleaming in contrast. “Are you in a hurry to get back?”

Zlatan looked over, then back out the window on his side. He flexed his hand against glass and slouched down, letting his other arm drape over his stomach so that hand could just brush its fingertips against the stiletto sewn into his coat seam. “Why?”

“It’s just there are two ways we can drive back. One’s about twenty minutes longer, but I like going that way because of the view.” Paolo tipped his head slightly as he looked at Zlatan this time, letting the light fall to whiten his throat. “And just the view. I’m not driving you off to be shot in the head.”

“Why would you say something like that?” Zlatan said. He noticed he was jiggling his knee and stopped, pressing his hand down on top of the joint.

With a long, exasperated sigh, Paolo turned away. Beneath his hand the steering wheel gracefully spun so they took a different fork than the one by which they’d came. “Because you’ve been nervous the entire night, and that really, honestly wasn’t my intention.”

“Yeah, well, work-habit.” Zlatan rubbed his fingers along the window-glass, watching how they left smudgy tracks. “Maybe I should’ve grabbed some apples from the basket in your kitchen.”

Paolo looked sharply at him, but didn’t comment as the car climbed into the dark, hunching hills. The occasional glimmer of light came from a distant farmhouse or something like that, but otherwise they were moving in almost pitch-blackness. The arc of the headlights barely extended ten yards before them and the trees leaned close together from either side of the road to mostly block out the sky. Though the rustling and rasping of their branches was still clearly audible, making Zlatan grit his teeth to keep himself from fidgeting. Once something crashed out in front of them and Paolo stepped on the brakes, but the deer just bounded onwards into the other side of the road.

And then they finally emerged into a clearing, with the diamond-studded sky above them and the city laid out below in a blaze of multicolored light so bright that it hurt Zlatan’s eyes. He instinctively closed them, then snapped them open again when he heard Paolo moving. The other man paused, his eyes brilliantly reflecting the city lights, before getting the rest of the way out of the car.

Zlatan blinked, then shook himself and hurriedly got out on the other side. He looked back at the woods, but they looked just as impenetrable from here as before, which did nothing to reassure him. “What are you doing? Where the hell are we? If Van Basten—”

“You sound like Sandro,” Paolo said, voice arch with surprised recognition. He stepped forward so he could lean his hip against the engine block, his head tipped back as he took in the sky and the land. “Sometimes I think he’s going to kill himself worrying, you know. He spends so much time thinking about how to do things that it’s hard to make him remember there is an end. This is supposed to be temporary—I’ve no intention of waging street wars for the rest of my life. I don’t let us get involved in them because I actually enjoy the process.”

“Funny that you hired me, then. Because I think they’re pretty fun.” Well, maybe they were so far to Yonkers or wherever that even Van Basten wouldn’t think to look here.

Paolo turned his head to watch Zlatan edge up on the other side of the engine. “Really?”

“Yeah. It’s my job for a reason,” Zlatan said, smiling.

After another few seconds, Paolo went back to watching the city. He absently loosened his collar, then stripped off his suit-jacket and leaned back to toss it into the driver’s seat. His hair was curling into his eyes and he wasn’t bothering to brush it away, though it was clearly making him blink more. “I think you find a lot more than that fun.”

Zlatan rolled his eyes. “Look, can we get to the point? What is it?”

Paolo looked at him, very levelly and coolly. He still had the driver’s door open. “Come over here and fuck me. And enjoy it.”

For a long moment, Zlatan stared at him. Then Zlatan decided the man was serious and sucked in a breath over his teeth. He started towards the woods, then jerked himself back and grabbed the door-handle on his side. “I think I’d rather—”

Paolo slammed the door on his side, then did something that made a loud clicking noise. When Zlatan did twist the handle, he found that the door was locked. He cursed beneath his breath and ducked to look at the key-slot, still jerking at the handle. Then he popped up to see Paolo folding his hands over the top of the car, not a hint of worry on his face, with a shiny, shiny key dangling from his fingers.

Zlatan bit the inside of his mouth and reached into his pocket, where he found one of Helena’s hairpins. The damn things got everywhere and he had never been so glad for that. “Oh, for God’s sake, you stuck-up Italian—”

He jammed the straightened hairpin into the lock and jiggered it about while still looking at Paolo, so he saw the other man look distinctly smug before frowning, and then suddenly widening his eyes in realization. Then Paolo dove for the lock on his side, but not before Zlatan had gotten the _back_ passenger door open.

Before the door was even all the way open, Zlatan was squeezing himself in and scrambling across the seat, trying to get to the steering wheel in time. He did get his arm through, but Paolo had actually lunged inside himself instead of trying to relock the doors—all right, he was smart—and he scooted into the driver’s seat just in time to bang himself into Zlatan’s elbow, knocking it away from the ignition. Something fell jingling to the floor, but Zlatan didn’t see what it was because Paolo had wedged himself into the space between the first two seats and grabbed Zlatan’s head.

Zlatan tried to jerk himself back, but only managed to bash his head against the roof of the car. He groaned and dropped—right onto Paolo’s mouth, which was warm and deceptively soft, its yielding dragging Zlatan further down. Paolo got his arm over Zlatan’s neck, pushing himself up in his seat, his eyelashes fluttering against Zlatan’s forehead. He made a low hungry noise in his throat that plucked at Zlatan’s gut, as if that was strung like a violin made by the goddamn Devil himself, and Zlatan dropped his hand to touch Paolo’s hip before recovering himself.

He pulled away, heaving and jerking at his limbs in the cramped space, but couldn’t twist Paolo’s hands off his shoulders so actually he helped pull Paolo into the backseat. And once there, the other man wasted no time in cementing his position, twining his fingers into Zlatan’s hair and hooking one foot around Zlatan’s ankle so both their legs were jammed up against the front seat. He kissed Zlatan again, with a little more urgency this time, and Zlatan bit him.

Paolo stiffened, then ripped himself free to loom over Zlatan, eyes snapping fire and mouth almost pulled back into a snarl. It was a surprisingly good look on him, and Zlatan suddenly found himself wondering just who won more often between Paolo and Nesta.

“Does your wife know what you’re doing?” Zlatan said, quick before Paolo could speak. His voice was thick and he grimaced at himself.

The anger in Paolo’s eyes died a little, but not because it’d been doused so much as redirected. He sank down, his thumbs beginning to move against Zlatan’s jawline. “She told me either I bring you around more often or I learn to tell Sandro myself to stop scowling all the time.” A faint hint of satisfaction settled about his mouth. “I was delighted to see that you and your wife have such a healthy, respectful arrangement yourselves. I really think more people should consider a little flexibility in their marriage.”

“Is that why Sandro’s spending the night?” Zlatan wriggled till he’d freed his hand from Paolo’s weight, then reached for Paolo’s wrist.

He did manage to grab it, but Paolo immediately twisted his hand about to draw Zlatan’s hand up to his mouth. Eyes still on Zlatan, Paolo kissed Zlatan’s wedding ring, loosely so his tongue slipped between Zlatan’s fingers as it warmed the cold metal. Then Paolo moved up, his mouth gliding along the side of Zlatan’s hand, and began nibbling at Zlatan’s fingertips. “Possibly,” he murmured. “Zlatan, I know you’re trying to upset me so I’ll stop.”

“And so you’re going to ignore me,” Zlatan muttered. He shifted uncomfortably beneath Paolo, unable to pull his eyes off Paolo’s mouth on his little finger.

Paolo paused, then lifted his head. “The point is that I’m _not_ ignoring you. There are limitations on my time—I think you, of all people, can understand that—but that doesn’t mean that I can’t or don’t want to treat you seriously. I don’t take on commitments that I don’t mean.”

Zlatan finally worked up enough willpower to pull his finger out of Paolo’s mouth, but only found himself dragging it along the side of the man’s face instead. He hissed as Paolo shifted his weight again, as Paolo slipped his hands inside Zlatan’s coat and pressed them down so their heat filtered through his shirt. “Neither do I,” he finally said.

“So what’s wrong?” Paolo asked. He leaned slowly forward, dropping only at the last minute, and put his mouth against Zlatan’s jaw. Then he leaned back, a perplexed look still creasing his brow. “What was the point of that other time if you didn’t mean it? You could have saved me without resorting to that, and I don’t believe that you meant that as a bit of cruelty. You don’t act like that.”

“Don’t I?” Son of a bitch, Zlatan thought. He stiffened as Paolo kissed him again, this time on the side of the neck, and then let out a long, uneven breath as the other man sat back. His hands passed up and down Paolo’s back, supposedly out of indecision, but really he liked the way the other man felt, the slope of his body and the change in his face as he bent into the touch. He liked Paolo, and wanted to fuck him, and damn it, Paolo wasn’t drunk or in danger. Just there, willing and wanting and Jesus, but Zlatan wasn’t a saint.

He let his hands rest on Paolo’s waist, just for a moment, but Paolo got the message and bent down to suck at Zlatan’s lower lip. After another moment, Zlatan hissed and jerked up his head, fitting their mouths squarely together, and then he pulled at Paolo, dragging the other man all the way onto him.

Once Paolo’s feet were free of the front seats, Zlatan tried to twist them around, but got a knee trapped and couldn’t wriggle it out. So he had to turn back, cursing his annoyance into the elegant curve of Paolo’s neck; by then Paolo had already unhooked Zlatan’s suspenders and plucked the shirt-tails from Zlatan’s waistband, his hands sliding beneath them to tease bare skin. His movements slowed as Zlatan roughly mouthed his neck, letting Zlatan catch up and then get ahead as he got Paolo’s shirt unbuttoned. Paolo reached up to dig fingers into the back of Zlatan’s head as Zlatan traced out his collarbone with a tongue-tip.

Then Zlatan tried to pull up his legs again, but he couldn’t turn any farther than he’d managed the first time. He snarled as he twisted them forward again, and he was just about ready to fucking kick the seats out of their places, but before he could Paolo pushed Zlatan’s knees apart and squeezed down between them.

Paolo looked up once, his hands at Zlatan’s fly. The blaze of the city below came from behind him so he was all shadow except for the faintest glimmer of his eyes. And then he bent his head and it was all glimpses: Paolo’s pale hands, a wettish hint of pink. The white of a shirt-tail rumpling into Paolo’s way, and one perfect dark curling eyebrow as he nudged that way from his head. The glint of his wedding ring as his hand pressed into Zlatan’s belly, trying to force some space for a little bit of flair, and the way Zlatan’s ring shone out from Paolo’s dark curls, where Zlatan was knotting his hands. Zlatan pushed himself as far back into the seat as he could, but Paolo just followed him there and then drew him forward again in gasps and hitches and finally a long, shaking spasm.

Afterward, Paolo remained down there, jamming himself into a ridiculously tight space with his head resting on Zlatan’s still trembling thigh. He wiped at his mouth, then casually licked his fingers clean. “Adriana keeps a bottle of hand lotion in the glovebox.”

“Jesus.” Zlatan took a breath. He was almost afraid it would shatter his lungs, but they miraculously survived. “Jesus. So much for your reputation as one of those graybearded old statesmen.”

“Well, I do like to think I’ve got an ear for tact, but I understand the virtue of directness.” Paolo finally began to wriggle up, pushing his elbows into Zlatan’s knees as he levered himself off the floor. “But really, I’m not even forty yet. Graybe—”

When Zlatan let him go, Paolo was breathless and hazy-eyed, almost limp in Zlatan’s hands. It made Zlatan bite the inside of his mouth again as he wrenched himself into the front and wrestled the glovebox open. “I did mean it.”

An elbow ground into Zlatan’s back, then vanished; Paolo murmured an apology as he settled onto the seat to the left of Zlatan. “What?”

“The other time,” Zlatan said. He looked at his slick fingers, rubbing his thumb in between them to get rid of the lotion clumping on the webbing. Then he twisted back—banged his head again and why the hell did Paolo drive such a small car?—and found Paolo twisting free of his trousers and boxers, the dark fabric easing off the long pale line of his thigh.

Zlatan had to grin, even though it hurt and not just at his mouth. He leaned forward and licked Paolo’s leg, then bit at the smooth muscle so Paolo hit himself on something and cursed. Then he pushed his fingers up between Paolo’s legs and pinned the other man into the corner, kissing him hard so Paolo moaned instead, throwing an arm about Zlatan’s shoulders.

Though that wasn’t nearly as good a grip as he should’ve gotten, and he almost fell out when Zlatan jerked the door open. His fingers scrabbled at Zlatan’s back and Zlatan had to haul him back by the waist, but it seemed Paolo didn’t mind too much as he jerked up his knees and hissed, clenching himself around Zlatan’s fingers. “What are you doing?” he asked.

“This is fucking stupid. I can’t move an inch in here,” Zlatan said, tightening his hold on the other man. Then he scooted himself up and squeezed his leg out the door; Paolo hitched himself up and ground his face into Zlatan’s neck, his mouth sharply nipping before a groan softened it. “Anyway, I’m going to really enjoy fucking you against your own car.”

Paolo arched, driving himself down so Zlatan’s fingers were enveloped to the knuckles. He got one leg hooked about Zlatan, but couldn’t quite get the other one there before they were outside, the cool night air making him shiver and press closer to Zlatan. Then Zlatan made the awkward pivot and Paolo’s back hit the side of the car; the following metallic ring was nearly swallowed by Paolo’s rising cry. The other man dug his heel hard into Zlatan’s back and pushed his hips at Zlatan till Zlatan’s trousers dropped around his fucking ankles, and didn’t that make it even harder.

But Paolo made up for it with the way he moved, when it was Zlatan’s cock stretching him and not mere fingers. He was…was shameless, Zlatan wanted to say, except shame in the first place didn’t seem like it should touch Paolo, should lay a single marring finger on the man’s cheekbones or swollen lips or lean belly.

Then again, Zlatan was touching him, inside and out, and was leaving his marks all over Paolo. But he didn’t feel sorry about it. Not right then, not in the middle of it with all that heat in Paolo’s eyes just for him, with him completely losing his mind and forgetting what he was fucking doing except that God, he was doing this and God, he didn’t want it to end.

* * *

“I think they thought we were friends trying to get over being dropped by our girlfriends and that’s why we always came together, and so they let us in for free,” Paolo said. He thoughtfully licked at Zlatan’s throat, a tousled curl sticking to the side of his forehead.

They’d moved back to the car and rolled down a window so Zlatan could let about half his legs hang out there, and while it still wasn’t comfortable, it was good enough so Zlatan didn’t think letting Paolo lie on top of him was going to kill his back. He stared at the ceiling, scratching at his head with the hand he had behind it, and moved his other hand off Paolo’s thigh. “I can’t picture Sandro watching a movie, even at a drive-in. He’d be too upset whenever the actors didn’t do the right thing.”

“That was why I always bought a lot of popcorn and made him eat it.” Paolo laughed softly, nuzzling at the underside of Zlatan’s jaw. “Finally he tossed it at the windshield and asked why I didn’t just tell him to shut up. And we got in an argument, and somehow ended up kissing, and that was that.”

“That sounds familiar,” Zlatan muttered. “Except for the last part.”

The sound of Paolo’s laughter was quickly absorbed by the thick padded leather seats. He levered himself up on his arms, gazing absently at Zlatan’s nose and then at Zlatan’s cheek. Then he looked off to the side. “He hasn’t gone to a movie in ages. He’s…”

“…very dedicated. I know, you told me, and also I’d already noticed. Look, I can work with him without breaking his neck, so you don’t have to worry about that. I just…would appreciate it if I didn’t have to do that too often, all right?” Zlatan said. He reached up and pulled at his loose tie till the knot finally came undone. Then he balled that up in his hand and began to sit up, forcing Paolo down his legs.

“That wasn’t quite what I was going to say,” Paolo slowly replied.

Zlatan looked at him, then turned away smiling. “I know, but I don’t have the problem there. He does. So why don’t you take him on a drive and talk to him about it first?”

Paolo breathed in like he was going to say something, but instead he got off of Zlatan. He started pulling on his clothes. “I’d better take you back.”

“Yeah, probably.” Zlatan stared out the windshield, looking at the harsh white glow of the city. Figo would call it an inappropriate thanks, but he couldn’t help it if the thing for which he was most thankful was being a good liar.

* * *

After flipping on the light, Zlatan waited three seconds before stepping into the room, his gun out. “Mauro should still be out.”

“Till morning,” Buffon agreed.

He was sitting on Zlatan’s rumpled bed, his knees up to support the book he was still reading; he hadn’t even bothered to look up at Zlatan. Beside him, a clearly exhausted Gilardino was lying tangled up in the only sheet still left on the bed, with only his bare feet, one shoulder and his head sticking out. Buffon did have a shirt on, with its tails fortuitously trailing between his legs, but nothing else. Various pieces of clothing were strewn about the room, and there was a bottle of cleaning solution on the side-table.

Zlatan rolled his eyes and walked over to the table, where he shoved his gun into his shoulder-holster. Then he hung that over a chair before going back to shut the door…just as Inzaghi passed by with a blatantly curious look inside. Supposedly he had a very nice house of his own and a mysterious French mistress installed in it, but he never seemed to go back to it. “What the hell did you do to my bed?”

“Took your advice on Alberto. I thought you’d like to know.” Buffon turned the page, absently pursing the corner of his lip.

“Well, great for you, and what’s wrong with telling me over breakfast? I-- _God_ , what’s the matter with you people? Don’t I get any privacy around here?” Zlatan snarled, stomping towards the bathroom.

He needed a shower but didn’t feel like taking one when Buffon was—for a second, Zlatan was sorely tempted to call Paolo and ask to come back for the night. Then again, God knew what Nesta might do to Zlatan’s bed there.

So Zlatan shut the door and jammed it with his heel while he scrubbed his head and neck in the sink. Then he washed under his arms and his feet as well, but threw his shirt back on before he walked out again. Of course, Buffon was still in the same exact position, but Gilardino’s feet had shifted a little.

“This is my room, and I think I’ve done enough to earn it,” Zlatan said, reaching for Buffon’s arm.

He was a little surprised at how sharply the other man yanked that away—the book flipped out of Buffon’s hands and dropped so a muffled cry came from the man’s other side—but then he remembered the gunshot wound. So Zlatan grabbed Buffon on the shoulder instead, then jerked at that.

Buffon tried to turn towards Gilardino and slap Zlatan away at the same time, and so he ended up getting neither right. But he didn’t budge an inch either. “Zlatan, I probably weigh as much as you do. Do that again and I’ll sit on you.”

Zlatan blinked.

And Buffon jerked his arm free, then twisted about and picked up his book. “Sorry. He’s back.”

“I figured,” Gilardino sleepily muttered, sitting up. He was rubbing vigorously at the right side of his face, but he dropped his hand and made a squeaky noise of surprise when he actually saw Zlatan. Then he blushed and yanked furiously at the sheet. “Oh, fuck. Gigi!”

“What?” After setting the book down on his lap, Buffon leaned over and scooted himself and Gilardino over to the other side of the bed. Then he settled there, stretching out his legs and picking up his book again. He paged through it before finding his spot. “We were waiting here to speak with him anyway.”

Gilardino bundled himself out of sight, but his embarrassed voice rose loud and clear. “But—his bed! And—and—Gigi, you’re not wearing any pants.”

“He’s seen it before, and you’re completely naked under there,” Buffon said, his deadpan perfect. He swayed with Gilardino’s subsequent scufflings and muffled curses, but didn’t seem too disturbed by it, since he kept reading.

Zlatan pinched the bridge of his nose. Figo had a hell of a lot to answer for on Sunday. “All right, I’m back and I’m tired and want to sleep. What the hell did you need to talk to me about?”

Buffon looked up from his book, then put that down on his lap and laid an arm over it. “Thank you.”

He looked serious. His eyes weren’t flat like they were when he was just being sarcastic, but instead had some actual emotion in them. “What?” Zlatan said.

“For…your sensible actions the other day, and when you and Alberto had your encounter,” Buffon said. He paused, looking straight ahead, and then turned back to Zlatan. “I’ve had some time to think clearly about that and I realize that that hadn’t just been simply beyond what you’re required to do, but also had to have been difficult for you. So thank you very much.”

After a moment, Zlatan stepped back so he could lean against the wall behind the bedside table. “Well, you’re welcome. Now why the hell are you in my bed?”

Gilardino emerged again, his blush still coloring his cheeks. “We were waiting because Gigi wanted to say that—and thank you from me, too—but you were late and we got bored,” he mumbled. “Sorry. We did, um, clean up. It’s just there aren’t any clean sheets right now—the whole house is a bit short.”

“No, that’s why you were in my bed. I want to know why you’re in it _now_.” Zlatan rubbed at the side of his face, then at his nose. Then he ground his thumb-knuckle into the spot between his eyebrows. “I’d really like to go to sleep.”

“I suppose you would, given how long dinner at Maldini’s ran,” Buffon slowly said. A trace of annoyance was visible on his face, and when he realized that Zlatan could see it, he made no attempt to hide it. “I thought you said—”

“Oh, shut up. I do what I want, and I don’t give a shit about your little issues with him. You want to argue with Paolo, you go and see him yourself. You don’t put me in the middle of it,” Zlatan snapped. He jerked himself off the wall and turned towards the door.

The bed creaked loudly and then Buffon swore, his voice sharp with pain. When Zlatan looked back, the other man was just sitting back while cradling his arm, and Gilardino was reaching for him with a concerned look. Buffon glanced up, then down at his arm. Then he sighed and squeezed his arm. “I apologize. Though actually, I respect Paolo a good deal and don’t have ‘little issues’ with him—I just sometimes wish he’d time his diplomatic ploys better, or at least make sure nobody’s doubling up on the same idea.”

“Well, it’s not like I could tell, with the way you went off on him before,” Zlatan muttered. He looked around the room, thinking, and then finally went over to the bed. After checking every inch of the mattress and finding it dry, if still warm from Buffon’s body, he flopped himself onto it with his back to the other two; his tired muscles instantly began to loosen so getting up became a thousand times more difficult after the first ten seconds alone. “And who said I wanted to fuck you? I mean, Gila’s pretty enough, but you’re this big cud-chewing lump.”

Gilardino choked. Buffon paused, then hit Zlatan’s shoulder in an adult, serious manner. “I’m not an idiot, Zlatan. And hurry up and take your nap. I have to go out of town at noon tomorrow and I’d like to make sure I get my say in before Paolo completely wins you over. One Nesta’s plenty.”

“You ever make that comparison again and I’ll break your jaw.” But Zlatan wasn’t kidding about that, no matter how he made himself sound. He stared at the mattress, trying to swallow the rising bad taste in his mouth. “Why are you leaving?”

Pages started rustling again, and for a moment, Zlatan didn’t think Buffon was going to answer. But then the other man let out an irritable grunt. “That hijacked shipment of champagne’s seriously endangered some important relationships of ours. I admit the sensible thing now is to look at Lucky Luciano and his Combine as a partner, but without those relationships, he’s got no reason not to simply kill us all and take our business that way. So I’m getting that champagne back from Van Basten.”

Zlatan breathed in very slowly, afraid he might gasp and give himself away. “Can I come?”

“I wouldn’t mind, but Paolo claims he needs you more. He and Sandro are having another sit-down talk with Van Basten as a distraction,” Buffon said. “Didn’t he tell you about that?”

“No.”

Buffon snorted. “Well, he will in the morning. I suppose it must have slipped his mind, what with everything else he was doing.”

Or Sandro had still been trying to talk Paolo out of including Zlatan. But that wasn’t an argument Sandro was going to win, Zlatan thought. Which didn’t make him happy, actually, and neither did what Buffon had revealed. To be honest, he wished Gigi had just kept his mouth shut. 

* * *

“This is _small_ ,” Zlatan muttered.

Luís sighed and moved around on his side of the wooden lattice, fiddling with his robes. “It’s a confessional, Zlatan. It’s designed for truths, not comfort.”

“Well, it’s damn uncomfortable, and that’s a truth.” Zlatan pushed his knees down as far as he could before the pressure got too painful, but still couldn’t get his upper legs parallel to the ground. He finally slouched back and lifted his knees so he could brace them against the door. “I fucked Maldini again, and I really liked it.”

Pause. “And…you feel guilty about it?”

“Yeah.” It was hot in this stupid little stall as well, the sweat already soaking into Zlatan’s collar. He pulled at his tie, but that just seemed to make it worse. “Also, Buffon apparently likes me now, and Nesta might be coming round a little. And yes, I feel guilty about that, and about Camoranesi who said he thought I might like heading upstate with him and Cannavaro for a vacation sometime, and Gilardino, and everybody, okay? Even Inzaghi and his fucking insomnia! I feel guilty! Are you happy now?”

“Zlatan, the confessional is not about me. It’s about you and God, and your problems. And of course I’m not happy. I want to see you well off and settled, not kicking dents in my church,” Luís sighed. He waited a moment, then pressed himself up to the lattice so he looked like some bulging-eyed monster. “So _stop that_. Don’t make me come over there.”

Actually, Zlatan hadn’t realized what he’d been doing, but once he did he was tempted to continue. It helped a little bit with how goddamn frustrating this job had become. But with everything else going on, he didn’t want to lose Figo too, so he stopped. “Yes, _Father_. So?”

“So…why do you feel guilty? And don’t start yelling at me again, Zlatan. You can’t blame me if I’m confused at your sudden concern with sinful vices.”

“Oh, for…I’m not guilty over _that_. If God didn’t want us to do it at some point, he wouldn’t have made it feel so good. I think He really only gets angry when we do it wrong.” Zlatan had to kick at the door one last time. “Or when we do it for the wrong reasons…okay, look, I was earning their trust, right? Well, I’ve got that now and it’s all working perfectly, including the not killing so many so they can keep going to church part, except I _like_ them. Now do you understand why this is a fucking serious problem?”

Luís sat back and appeared to think for a bit. “Well, I suppose. I’m more inclined to call it a surplus of riches, but—”

“Luís, Jesus. I’m not fucking here to like them. I’m here to work. And I’m working _today_. Understand? This afternoon, and…and fuck. Fuck. Why do they have to all be so sexy and good-looking and fucking good in bed? Why can’t some of them be horse-faced twats like the Dutch?” Snarling, Zlatan ripped off his tie. The damn thing was going to stink of all the sweat soaking into it anyway. “I don’t want to leave.”

He fell back against the wall and stared up at the dark ceiling. A bead of sweat rolled into his eye, making it sting, and Zlatan irritably rubbed it out.

“I don’t want to leave,” he repeated more quietly.

“Have you mentioned this to Helena?” Luís finally said.

Her name startled Zlatan, and at first it was in a good way, but that quickly dissipated. “I called her this morning, since she needed to know it’d be today. It came up. She really likes New York City too, but she said it’s my call what I do since she can swing it whether she has to go back to Milan or not. And she said it’d be nice if I was in one place for a while. Which wasn’t really helpful.”

Luís murmured to himself, and when Zlatan looked over, he found the other man counting his rosary beads. He sighed and shifted around, trying to keep his legs from cramping, till he heard the muttering stop.

“Well, it is up to you,” Luís said. “Zlatan, I’m not going to tell you to go or to stay, because I don’t know exactly how it is for you. But I think the best way to decide is to look at what really matters to you. You’re smart and flexible—once you know that, you can figure out a plan to get what needs to be done, done.”

Zlatan started to snap at Luís, but cut himself off before the first swear-word was out of his mouth. He pressed his hand over his nose and pushed his curled fingers against his eyes, thinking hard and long and fast. He didn’t have a lot of time—he was supposed to meet Paolo to…fuck. _Fuck_. Fine, it’d be that way.

He heard Luís exclaim as the confessional door banged behind him, but Zlatan didn’t pay any attention. There was too much to do.

* * *

The sit-down was going to happen in one of the new fancy restaurants just off Broadway at five-thirty, which was early enough so the place wouldn’t be packed with idiotic gawking rubes looking for celebrities. Both sides were to arrive promptly at five and get out of their cars at the same time. Nesta was in the middle car with Paolo, while Zlatan was supposed to be in the last car, but was actually buying a pack of chewing gum at the corner store while an edgy Gilardino attempted to get him back in the car. “I’ve got gum.”

“Yeah, and I don’t chew that brand. Look, it’s only four forty-five. We’ll be fine,” Zlatan said. He dug into his left pocket, absently reading the cigar boxes lining the shelves behind the counter, and then switched to his right. “Shit. Where the hell is my money—”

Gilardino coughed up his clip in a spasm that made him nearly drop the damn thing, and then have to go through a juggling routine to keep it bouncing in the air till Zlatan finally snatched it away. He gave it right back, but not before Gilardino had turned a wide-eyed, wounded look on him.

“Oh, for God’s sake. If you’re that worried, just go out there and drive the rest of the way. It’s just around the corner and I’ll catch up as soon as I’m done here.” Zlatan reached into his pocket and pulled out his own money clip, then began to shuffle through the bills for the right one. “If you’re going to worry about Buffon, go do it where you aren’t making me so antsy. You twitch again and I’m going to shoot something, and I won’t be held responsible for whatever it is.”

The other man jerked his head up, all offended, but then wilted just as quickly. He turned away, stuffing his hands in his pockets, and quietly edged out of the store.

For a moment, that gnawing pit of guilt reminded Zlatan it had taken over his gut. Then he firmly told it to shut up and leaned forward on the counter as the register boy came back with his gum.

“Here, I looked all over the back for it and it’s the last one,” the kid sullenly said. He threw it down so the gum bounced.

Zlatan caught it on the rise, scissoring it between his fingers, and at the same time chucked down a few bills with his other hand. When the kid started to grin, Zlatan smiled himself but stabbed down his fingers on the greenbacks. “Not so fast. This isn’t the Ritz and you sure as hell aren’t Clara Bow. I need to make a phone call.”

“Well…” the kid started. Then he yelped and put out his hand in protest as Zlatan began to take the money away. “Okay, sure. It’s right here.”

He handed it to Zlatan, then snatched up the money and raced back to the radio set in the corner, which was tuned to the Dodgers-Giants game. Looked all over the back…Zlatan snorted and put up his elbow on the counter so he could reach the dial. He spun the wheel a couple times, then waited for the call to go through.

“Zlatan,” he said the moment he heard the click. “Listen, I’ve got a proposition and it’s first-come first-serve, so shut up, listen good and make a decision fast. I wanna send Van Basten a present, but I’m a generous guy so I’m going to let you in on the action, too. Buffon’s heading for Van Basten’s dockside warehouse to take back that champagne shipment. It’s too late for Van Basten to get any extra men up there, but I figure you could waltz in, flash your badge and come up with some shit reason to hold Buffon in the precinct slammer for a few hours. Just him—the others aren’t worth getting your hands dirty with. Let ‘em run.”

Long pause. *Who’s picking him up?*

“Van Basten. My God, do I have to lay out the whole—”

*No, got it. And you just want me to let him know it was your tip-off? I guess I can do that, if you don’t ask for any share in the money bonus.*

Zlatan spread his hand on the counter and looked at its back, at the scars on the knuckles and the rough edge of the fingertip calluses just peeking past his nails. Which were perfect little white crescents only because Helena didn’t like them snagging her hose, and well, fuck that. By the time he saw her again, he would’ve had time to get another manicure.

He stuck his index finger in his mouth and chewed at it. “Yeah. But watch it with the nightsticks. Van Basten’s going to take a while to get there, and trust me when I say Buffon’s no good dead. Got that?”

*Crystal clear,* Stam said, and hung up.

The dial tone was loud and annoying, and according to Zlatan’s watch he needed to get moving, but he waited a few more seconds before he bit off a chip in his nail and hung up the phone. Then he scraped the gum pack off the counter and stalked out the door.

* * *

Van Basten showed up with Van der Vaart, who still had traces of the black eye Zlatan had given him, and Robben, so that probably meant Van Persie was running the streets. All three of them glowered towards Zlatan’s car before turning to Paolo, and there was some angry snarling and posturing before an exasperated Inzaghi trotted over to the car.

He didn’t even wait for Gilardino to roll down the glass. “Zlatan, out. You and Robben are going to stand in the lobby, where everyone can see you.”

“Well, well, aren’t I popular,” Zlatan drawled. Though honestly he didn’t mind too much, since it’d make things easier for him. And keep Gilardino out of the way so Zlatan didn’t have to worry about him or see the worry on the other man’s face and then start chomping off his damn nails again. If Stam fucked up his end, Zlatan was going to spend his two-week layoff applying his creativity to rearranging that cold bastard’s guts.

Zlatan stuck a piece of gum in his mouth as he hopped out of the car and had it thoroughly chewed by the time he reached the little group on the sidewalk. He nodded to Van der Vaart and Van der Vaart viciously spat at Zlatan’s feet. “Traitor.”

“Lousy piece of shit,” Zlatan replied, smiling broadly. He turned his head and hawked his gum into a trashcan two feet away. “Hey, I don’t want to hold anybody up here. I can go—”

“No, you’re staying.” Paolo somehow combined smoothing his tie with an icy look at Van Basten so he actually looked as if between him and Nesta, he were the more dangerous of the two. Since he’d probably think about how long he could drag it out, as opposed to just hacking away…he raised his eyebrow. “Well, Marco?”

Van Basten shrugged and turned into the doorway, Van der Vaart reluctantly falling in behind him. He and Nesta exchanged their own baby-eater looks, and then everyone slowly, edgily went into the restaurant. Except for Zlatan and Robben, who were stuck in the front lobby. Robben kept gesturing menacingly to somebody in one of their cars, as if Zlatan didn’t already know anybody sitting there would have a straight bead on him. Gilardino would have one on Robben as well, and everybody swore that Alberto knew his way around a rifle, but Zlatan was somewhat less than reassured. He liked Gila, but for what the man was, and that didn’t include stone-cold killer.

The negotiations got going just with the seating arrangements—Nesta in particular seemed to have a lot of issues with chair placement—and then finally got into the business end as the waiters poured wine for everybody. Inzaghi brought out a map, a notepad and an adding machine that mostly was there to look shiny and important since the other man never used the damn thing. On the Dutch side, Van Basten frequently had to stop and pretend he wasn’t embarrassed as Kuyt couldn’t quite keep up. Personally, Zlatan wouldn’t have blamed Kuyt—Inzaghi was just a freak of nature when it came to number manipulation.

“So how are you enjoying life with the perverts and the boy-lovers?” Robben asked. He sat down on one of the overstuffed, elaborately decorated chairs and slung his arms over the backs of the chairs on either side of him. His hairline looked a little more sparse at the sides since the last time Zlatan had seen him.

“Bored, actually. It’s just like watching Van der Sar pat all the kids on the back when they come home with boo-boos, only with more garlic and tomato sauce.” Zlatan had the damnedest time not laughing, either at the ridiculousness of what he was saying or at Robben’s face. “Stop getting all worked up, Arjen. I’m a fucking mercenary. What do you expect? You’re going to pay _Van der Vaart_ more than me, then you reap what you sow.”

Robben wasn’t a complete idiot, even if his touchy pride usually got in the way of his brain. He took a moment to really hear what Zlatan was saying, and then he stood up and got mad. “Listen, you worthless piece of shit, you rode into town like you were going to solve all our problems, but what happened? A couple weeks later we’re still dealing with these ass-fucking Italians—”

“Oh, and you never took it from Van Bommel?” Zlatan said, crossing his arms over his chest. He leaned back against the wall, dropping behind a large potted palm.

When Robben’s face got all red and blotchy like that, he went from prematurely old to just plain gnome-like. He took a step forward, his fist shaking, and then he paused. His mouth started to form the Dutch equivalent of ‘oh, shit,’ but Zlatan had already noticed Kuyt shifting at the table and was already dropping to the ground.

The bullet whizzed over his head and buried it in the wall; the wood and wallpaper were still splintering away when Zlatan drove his shoulder into Robben’s shins, slamming the other man into the front doors. Then he spun away, hoping that that had alerted Gilardino and Pirlo to the fact that inside was going to hell, and scrambled into the dining room.

Nesta had been nearly as fast and had already dragged Paolo to the floor, while Inzaghi had yanked the tablecloth so plates, glasses and everything else had flipped up onto the Dutch, keeping them from getting a straight shot off. Actually, more than that: when the tablecloth fell, only Van Basten and Kuyt were up. Van der Vaart’s legs were lying on the floor, poking out from behind the table, and as Zlatan threw himself to the Italian side of the room, he noted the adding machine had landed on the other side of the table, one of its corners a little bloody.

He would’ve loved to have seen if Rafael was really out of the picture or just stunned again—the man had a fucking hard head, unfortunately—but there wasn’t any time. Van Basten had gotten to where he was by fighting, and he was already yanking a gun from his trouser-leg—so much for coming unarmed to this meeting.

Nesta was trying to draw his gun and shove Paolo towards the back, but his leg had gotten tangled in a chair. Inzaghi hung back to cover, so Zlatan dove for Nesta and jerked his hand around so he shot the bastard bursting out of the kitchen doors.

“What the—” Nesta snarled. He jerked his hand away and was clearly going to start in on Zlatan.

Rolling his eyes, Zlatan threw himself over the two of them, then snagged Paolo’s arm and dragged him up a short flight of steps and behind a decorative railing. Where Paolo went, Nesta followed, so that got the other man up just before—fuck, Van der Vaart wasn’t dead, and he’d managed to get around Inzaghi to grab the tommy-gun the dead assassin had dropped. 

Zlatan jumped over Nesta and ran towards Van der Vaart, watching that gun muzzle turn towards him. He sucked in his breath, then spun sideways to hit the other man shoulder-first. His hands forced the gun down towards the floor and then they went over, the metal heating up fast as Van der Vaart yanked the trigger. It started to burn Zlatan’s palms, but he gritted his teeth and held on, resisting Van der Vaart’s first attempt to roll them over before viciously headbutting the man, right on the bloody dent in his forehead.

It knocked Van der Vaart out, but fucking awkwardly so his sudden dead weight shoved Zlatan over, trapping him beneath the other man. So Zlatan got a great upside-down view of Inzaghi whacking a chair into Kuyt, that thin-lipped expression of his never changing, and Nesta and Van Basten trading potshots as they each crouched behind overturned tables. Robben in the doorway, screaming and clutching a bloody knee. The edge of a swinging door—somebody else coming out of the kitchen, and shit, Nesta and Paolo still were completely exposed on that side.

He heaved hard at Van der Vaart, then elbowed the man an extra time in the stomach as Van der Vaart fell off. It felt good for a moment, and got Van der Vaart off faster, but it made the tommy-gun slide away from Zlatan so he needed an extra moment to grab it.

Van Bommel used that extra moment to slam the butt of his sawed-off shotgun down onto Zlatan’s forearm. There was a loud, wet crack and then—Zlatan whipsawed, swinging his legs forward but the rest of him back. His left foot connected with Van Bommel’s shin and the other man collapsed, grunting; the tommy-gun took a lucky bounce to point at him and Zlatan quickly jammed his foot under it, then shot.

He only took Van Bommel in the shoulder, and high up as well: the son of a bitch shouldn’t even have any problems walking out. But it was Van Bommel’s gunhand, and the other man did drop the shotgun so Zlatan, blinking furiously to clear his blurry vision, could jerk himself up onto one knee and whack the side of the tommy-gun into Van Bommel’s temple.

The impact jarred the gun out of Zlatan’s hands and sent him down onto his good forearm, gasping desperately as the pain seared through him. But he could still hear gunshots and so he made himself roll, then was just moving towards where he remembered Paolo being when somebody grabbed his arm. “This way!” Nesta hissed.

His bad arm. Nesta was fucking lucky Zlatan didn’t drop then and there, but then, the picky little shit probably would’ve yelled at Zlatan for being an inconvenience. So Zlatan jerked his arm away, nearly fell over in that direction instead, and finally managed to right himself enough to stagger through the back hallway after the others. The moment they were in the alley behind the restaurant, he dropped down against the wall and pressed his arm across his chest. God—goddamn it, he didn’t have time for a doctor’s visit. It sounded like Van Basten was heading out through the kitchen.

“What the hell happened?” Nesta demanded. He jammed Paolo between himself and the wall while Inzaghi shot twice in rapid succession into the air.

“I made their signal go off early, and that’s why we got away.” Zlatan bit the inside of his mouth, and then his lip when he tasted blood. He jerked up his head as a car screeched to a stop at the alley mouth, but relaxed when he saw Pirlo hustling out of its door.

Nesta looked, then waved at Pirlo to hurry up, like it wasn’t obvious that there was still a gunfight going on at the front of the restaurant that Pirlo needed to worry about. He nearly bit Paolo’s head off when the other man put a hand on his arm, apparently going to point that out; Paolo and Nesta did a moment of staring before Nesta roughly ducked his head and began stroking Paolo’s chest and sides. He’d probably say he was searching for wounds, but no wonder Paolo thought it was fine to neck in the middle of a firefight. 

Paolo didn’t stop him either, but instead turned to Zlatan. “Signal—wait, picking a fight with you? That was their signal? How did you guess what was going on?”

“Well, anybody with brains knows you can’t out-calculate Inzaghi, so why the hell else would Van Basten go through that shit? And if you need a distraction, of course you pick a fight with me,” Zlatan said.

Inzaghi glanced at Zlatan like he wasn’t sure he accepted the compliment. Nesta simply looked irritated. “You sound proud of that.”

“Yeah, well, does prove I’m the best show in…in town.” Fucking arm was really beginning to get on Zlatan’s nerves, but the dizzy moments at least let him miss most of Nesta’s complaining. He got up, breathing as slowly as he could, and then ran for the car the moment Pirlo vaguely gestured that it was safe.

It wasn’t, but Zlatan knew if he stopped running, he’d pass out, so he just ignored the bullets till he was falling on the backseat. He jarred his arm and for a moment everything went soft black. Then the world came back, and somebody was yelling at him from a couple miles away and there was a weird thumping on his feet—he pulled in his knees and that stopped. But then whoever it was started to pull at his head, lifting and turning it, and Zlatan slurred something rude at them but that just made them mess around more. And then he passed out.

* * *

“You didn’t notice you’d gotten clipped on the side?” Paolo disbelievingly said.

Zlatan slapped Gilardino’s hand away from his rib-bandages, then adjusted those back so they weren’t rubbing against his nipples and making those itchy. “Look, my arm was broken. That really, really hurts.”

“You bled all over the seat,” Nesta chimed in.

“So send me the cleaning bill. Jesus. I didn’t notice, okay? I was a _little_ busy trying to get us out of there.” When Zlatan got off the bed, he felt a momentary dizziness, but it soon passed. He took a step towards his closet and it came back, and then got worse as he inadvertently jiggled his arm in its sling. Son of a bitch, but this was going to make things tricky.

Nesta opened his mouth, shut it, and hunched down in his seat, his chin on his arms on the chair-back, with a strange furrowed-brow look on his face. He glanced up when Paolo told Gilardino to see out the doctor, but didn’t say anything or get up and start screaming even though Paolo came all the way over to put his hand on Zlatan’s arm. “You should be—”

“I’m really thirsty, is what I am. And hungry. I missed dinner,” Zlatan muttered. He jerked open the door and looked at the rack, then picked out a dark-blue shirt. After getting his good arm into a sleeve, he let the shirt hang as he worked his other arm out of its sling.

Paolo pressed his lips together and moved around to the back to hold up the shirt. He helped Zlatan thread his other arm through, then slid to the front to straighten it out beneath the sling. “I’ll have somebody bring something up.”

His hands rose towards Zlatan’s neck, then stilled as Zlatan jerked away. Then Paolo sighed and stood back, letting Zlatan button up his own damn shirt.

“Look, I’m fine. It’s a broken arm, the graze wasn’t that deep, and I’m not about to drop dead or anything.” The sling got in the way no matter how many times Zlatan pulled it aside so he nearly ripped it off. He actually was reaching for it when he noticed Paolo lifting a hand again and instead reluctantly put his arm back into it. “What’s the matter? Shouldn’t you be worrying more about the fact that Van Basten tried to kill you? Again?”

“Negotiating’s clearly no longer an option. It simplifies things,” Paolo said. He briefly had that icy thoughtful look on his face, but then seemed to realize he wasn’t looking at anybody he knew he needed to kill. After a sharp shake, he half-turned away and stared off at the far wall, absently pulling at his hair. “Gigi hasn’t checked in yet, or any of the men who went with him. I called Rino back into town and sent him to—”

A faint shout came from downstairs, making Paolo start and frown and Nesta slew about in his seat. They both listened with the same intent look on their face, and then Nesta half-hissed something and lunged for the door.

Paolo was right on his heels, and the door hadn’t stopped shaking when Zlatan walked slowly through it. He’d also stopped to get his coat and shoulder holster and work those on, but he hadn’t buckled the holster yet when he reached the railing.

When Zlatan looked down, the doctor was tossing his coat and hat back to Gilardino while a bloody-faced Mauro was nearly screaming in his haste to let Paolo know what had happened. Nesta was nowhere in sight and that worried Zlatan—but then the other man came running back down the hall, a phone in his hand with its cord whipping wildly behind him. A couple more men were stumbling through the front door. They all had injuries, but they were all mobile and didn’t seem to be in serious danger of dying.

And that didn’t make Zlatan feel any better, but at least he didn’t have that on his mind. He waited till he’d counted them all, then turned back into his room. After locking the door, he dragged over a chair and jammed it beneath the knob. Then he went over to the window, jerked that open—his arm and side complained loudly, but he set his jaw and ignored it—and in slightly less than a minute, he was hurrying down the sidewalk, keeping close to the shadows. He picked the lock of a car on the next street over, rewired the ignition and then was speeding down the road.

* * *

By the time he got to the station, Stam told him Van Persie had already been around and taken Buffon. But they’d just left, and on the way out, one of Van Persie’s men had let slip that they needed gas, and so Stam was goddamn lucky since at that point, Zlatan didn’t care too much about what trouble killing a cop would bring down.

Zlatan circled out from the station and spotted the car refueling at the second station. He parked a little down the road, then jogged back, slowing down as he came near the station’s bright lights. He left his sling in the car.

Van Persie saw him first and stopped dead in his tracks, his hand going inside his coat. Then he paused, frowning, and the rest of his men finally noticed and began to react. But he held up a hand before Zlatan had to make things messy, and Zlatan knew there was a reason he…well, he didn’t really like Van Persie but he had a little more respect for him than for most of the Dutch. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“Just wanted to see if you got the message,” Zlatan said. He pitched his voice so it’d carry, and heard a sharp clank come from inside the car’s trunk.

The Dutch immediately got all nervous, but relaxed a bit when Zlatan pretended not to have heard and rounded the other side of the car. He stopped well short of Van Persie, who slowly took his hand out of his coat. “Yeah. Yeah, we did. I’m a little confused, personally, but word on high—” Van Persie added a disrespectful drawl to the words; he kept saying he owed Van Basten his life for something or the other but he hadn’t taken Van Nistelrooy’s booting well “—is that you should come down and talk.”

“No kidding,” Zlatan said, and flicked the tiny toy gunpowder bomb behind and to the left of himself.

It was so fast none of the others saw, but they certainly heard the loud _pop_ the bomb made as it exploded on impact with the ground. Every single one of them whipped around, even Van Persie—though he was the first to start twisting back. Of course Zlatan had gone for him first, and broken arm or not, had little trouble in getting a gun to Van Persie’s head. He didn’t bother locking the other man to him and Van Persie was smart enough to not think Zlatan was messing up there.

Van Persie froze. His eyes were blazing and the muscle in his cheek twitched as Zlatan had his two men lay down their guns, then kneel down with their hands flat against the ground. Then he went quietly with Zlatan as they walked about behind the men; two quick kicks and those two were out. Zlatan put his foot down and opened his mouth.

And fucking Van Persie quickly twisted, ducking his head so the gun-muzzle slid away from him and throwing back an elbow. He didn’t connect with the stitches, but close enough for Zlatan to see goddamn stars; Zlatan shoved an arm through them, grabbed some part of Van Persie, and held onto it as he furiously cracked his pistol-butt into the other man’s skull.

Then he cursed again as Van Persie dropped like a rock, forcing Zlatan to catch him with both arms. The pressure on the broken one nearly made Zlatan fall to his knees, but in the end he managed to stay upright. He quickly hauled Van Persie over to the car and got the door open, then heaved the other man into the backseat. Then he stripped Van Persie of tie and suspenders and used those to bind the man’s hands and feet, and also to gag him. After tucking Van Persie’s ridiculously long legs in, Zlatan shut the door and walked around to take the pump out of the tank. He screwed on the cap, went inside to pay off the lone man at the counter and then went back out, where he spent a couple more minutes dragging the other two men over to a dumpster and dropping them inside.

That effort forced Zlatan to pause and catch his breath, but he made himself get moving again after he’d counted to sixty. The dizzy spells were getting closer together, but he couldn’t afford to stop yet.

He started up the engine and drove at the speed limit even though he was chewing the sore inside of his mouth to keep from fidgeting. At least no idiots got in his way, so only fifteen minutes later, he was pulling up behind the cathedral. The light in Luís’ office was still on, and as Zlatan got out of the car, he saw a shadow appear and then disappear at it so he didn’t bother honking. Instead he went around to the back of the car and popped the trunk.

Buffon spat out his gag the moment Zlatan had it unknotted. His face was bruised up and there were more bruises under the flapping, filthy rags of his shirt, but he wasn’t bleeding anywhere. Though his eyes were so full of rage that they were gleaming with a bit of wetness at the corners. He yanked at his cuffed and chained hands and ankles. “Zlatan, what the _hell_ \--”

“Yeah, I know. I’m sorry, but you know, you really should’ve just kept on disliking me,” Zlatan muttered. He reached in and grabbed Buffon’s manacles, then heaved hard so the other man was forced halfway out of the trunk.

His side spasmed in pain and he stumbled, gasping. Not one to miss a chance like that, Buffon immediately jerked back and Zlatan didn’t have the strength to resist. So instead Zlatan took a page out of Paolo’s book and went with the pull, throwing his broken arm around Buffon and kissed him, so hard that Zlatan’s lips at least went numb.

Buffon stiffened and didn’t do anything for a moment. Then he hissed a little as Zlatan squeezed the pulse-points on his neck. His hands scrabbled at Zlatan’s chest, then fisted in Zlatan’s shirt and he made a low snarling sound in his throat that abruptly died away as he slumped down.

Zlatan edged back a few inches, letting Buffon’s head slide down onto his chest. He was still cradling the other man when Luís finally hurried out towards him.

“What on…my God, Buffon.” Luís didn’t hesitate. He squeezed in an arm between Zlatan and Buffon, then began pulling. When Zlatan belatedly joined in, the two of them managed to get Buffon out of the car, across the path and into the church without too much trouble. “What’s going on?”

“He didn’t fight back,” Zlatan said blankly.

His inattention cost him as Buffon’s limp arm hit his side, like an afterthought revenge. Zlatan sucked in his breath sharply and tried not to double over. He got his half of Buffon onto the couch Luís indicated, then let go and leaned against the wall. After one quick look at him, Luís disappeared into the next room.

He came back a couple minutes later with a first-aid kit, a small bottle and a glass of water. The last two items he handed to Zlatan, who gratefully dosed himself up with the painkillers, before he knelt down and started attending to Buffon. “So…”

“You got Lippi and Luciano?” Zlatan asked. His voice sounded harsh and his throat was scratchy. He drank the rest of the water, but it didn’t seem to help.

Luís nodded after a moment. He was still working on Buffon.

“Well, good. I’ll call when it’s all set.” Zlatan put the glass down on the table beside the couch. Then he started to straighten, but Luís grabbed his hand and held on, finally looking up at Zlatan.

The other man cleared his throat, but then changed his mind and just rose to embrace Zlatan. He was careful of Zlatan’s side, but he hugged hard where he could. Then he kissed Zlatan’s forehead—Zlatan closed his eyes—and let go. The next moment, he was busy with Buffon again.

After a long breath, Zlatan turned on his heel and went back to the car. He got Van Persie out of the backseat and put him in the trunk, and then he drove back to Paolo’s townhouse.

* * *

Van Persie woke up when Luca was carrying him inside, which made things interesting enough to keep Paolo from doing more than grabbing Zlatan’s elbow and hissing to go in and _lie down now_. Zlatan looked at Paolo’s retreating back, suddenly understanding why the Maldini boys were so well-behaved, and then he did go inside. He ran into Inzaghi in the hall and Inzaghi actually asked if Zlatan had any new injuries. Granted, it wasn’t like Inzaghi looked like he was asking for any other reasons than wanting to know if the doctor’s bills were going to go up any more, but it still threw Zlatan enough for him to accidentally walk upstairs.

He’d just gotten to the second floor when he realized where he was going. Zlatan stopped himself, cursing and pulling at his hair, but downstairs was a total racket so he finally went to his room. And there Mauro was, curled up on the bed with an icepack strapped to his ankle and his back to Zlatan so it looked like he was still fully dressed. But then he turned over and Zlatan saw the bare patches of chest, and understood that those were bandages and not a shirt.

Not that that stopped Mauro from damn near leaping off the bed. He hissed and stumbled, then hissed some more as he twisted away from Zlatan’s outstretched hand. Instead he grabbed onto Zlatan’s good arm—okay, good eye and quick thinking—and then swung back, his arm going up over Zlatan’s neck and his mouth desperately clinging to Zlatan’s lips. For a moment Zlatan stood there and felt a little bit more of a heel than before.

Then he put a hand on Mauro’s side, not thinking, and Mauro nearly passed out before he finished wincing. That at least gave Zlatan something to do, and he spent the next five minutes or so coaxing Mauro back onto the bed. Mauro wanted him to lie down as well, and did a lot towards convincing Zlatan’s cock that it’d be a good idea, but—well, fuck, occasionally even Zlatan wasn’t up for it. And right now it was more than tiredness keeping him back.

By the time he finally freed himself and got out, the ruckus downstairs had died down. It sounded like everyone had disappeared, maybe gone to the basement, but nevertheless Zlatan was careful about sneaking down to the kitchen.

Thankfully, that was not only empty, but also it looked like somebody had run off in the middle of making a…a sandwich. Swallowing his grimace, Zlatan reminded himself to take what he could get and set about finishing the process.

It took a little longer than he figured, and got pretty damn frustrating thanks to his fucking broken arm. Even his good arm was sore, since it’d been doing the lion’s share of the night’s work, and so it was hard for him to do something as simple as hack off a new piece of bread because he wasn’t used to the fat cast and had knocked the fucking slice off the counter. “Fuck.”

“What are you…you’re getting crumbs everywhere.”

Zlatan paused, then slowly rolled back his head and closed his eyes. “Jesus Christ, Nesta. Will you just fuck off for _once_? Just long enough for me to eat one damn sandwich and go to bed?”

The footsteps continued around Zlatan and then Nesta started opening and closing cabinets, which was Zlatan’s answer. Gritting his teeth, Zlatan opened his eyes and grimly began sawing at the loaf of bread again, only to have it roughly yanked away. He snarled and turned, Nesta made a little leap back, and then both of them stared at the knife Zlatan had nearly poked into Nesta’s midriff.

After a moment, Zlatan tossed the knife down on the counter. He yanked his plate towards himself, then picked up one of the salami slices and stuffed it into his mouth. Nesta leaned over to pick up the knife and put it away, but otherwise he didn’t comment. Instead he went back to the little pile of food he was making at one end of the counter, adding guanciale and a wedge of pecorino romano to the pasta, eggs and pepper grinder. Then he got out a saucepan, turned up the heat under a pot of water already on the stove, and started cooking.

Zlatan absently nibbled on the rest of the salami and a couple lettuce leaves, watching the other man. He’d never have pegged Nesta as particularly domestic, even after seeing him around Paolo’s family, but Nesta clearly not only knew how to cook, but also took it very seriously. Not a movement was wasted, and yet his spare grace was about more than simple efficiency. He would linger over something like checking the doneness of the pasta, and once he half-turned right after tasting the sauce and Zlatan caught a brief look of actual content on his face.

After the pasta was in the sauce, Nesta portioned it out into two bowls, which he carried over to Zlatan’s side of the counter. He put one bowl down and pushed it over to Zlatan without acting like he wished it was an instrument of death, then positioned himself over the other one and started eating.

About a minute later, he stopped and looked irritably at Zlatan, which was more familiar. “You’re letting it get cold.”

“Sorry,” Zlatan muttered. He held his mouth open a moment longer, then shrugged and picked up the fork.

Getting the pasta into his mouth was awkward and messy, since he couldn’t hold up the bowl with his other hand and he wasn’t about to scrunch down the three feet to the counter. But once it was there, he had to admit…it was good. Really good.

“Well?” Nesta rapidly tapped his fork against the rim of his bowl. His tone was curt with impatience.

“Guess you don’t mean to do it by poisoning me.” Zlatan started to twirl up another forkful, but had to stop in the middle of that to slap his bowl away from Nesta’s darting hand. He swore and dropped the fork to clutch at his cast, then whirled on Nesta. “What? _What_? What the fuck do you want now? You want me to tell you it’s good? Fine, it’s good. It’s fucking great. It’s the best pasta carbonara I’ve eaten in my life. All right? Now you can take it back, if you’re still fucking offended. I’ll just go to bed hungry.”

For some reason Nesta actually looked taken aback, his hand pulled up like he’d been meaning to lay against his cheek like a startled old lay when he’d frozen. He blinked a few times, then put his hand down beside his bowl and stared into his food. His other hand came up to rub at his nose before dropping down on the other side of the bowl. “Sorry,” he muttered.

“What?”

Nesta glanced at Zlatan, then went back to pasta-gazing. A few strands of his hair spilled out from behind his ear to stripe his uncomfortable expression; the hand closest to Zlatan was trying to knead the counter. “I don’t—want it back. You can eat it.”

“Oh, thanks,” Zlatan snorted. He tapped his fork with one finger, then picked it up. Then he put it down. It was good, and he was starving, but God, was he also tired. And the painkillers were wearing off. “Christ, you and Paolo. I’m getting really tired of trying to guess—”

Nesta turned to Zlatan and reached up. He laid hesitant fingertips on Zlatan’s cheek as he leaned forward, stopping just short of Zlatan’s mouth. Then he sucked in a breath, his eyes closing, and leaned the rest of the way while gently pushing Zlatan’s head around to meet him.

It was sweet but short, with Nesta abruptly ducking away at the end. He pushed at his hair, shoving more of it into his face. “Eat it,” he said quietly, turning back to his own share.

Instead of doing that, Zlatan just looked at him for a few minutes. The pasta got cold, Nesta didn’t say anything but just doggedly chewed his food, and that goddamn yawning pit of guilt inside Zlatan got infinitely deeper. If this was what real belief was like, Zlatan would’ve happily gone back to being a total ignorant moron.

Zlatan bit his lip, then finally jammed his fork down into the pasta. He transferred that to his mouth and then into his stomach like a machine, with the wonderful taste of it like a fucking burn on his soul. When he was done, he wanted to both lick the plate and fling it at something hard, and instead he carried it over to the sink and ran it under the faucet. He was going to leave it for somebody else to scrub up, but before he could Nesta had already come over and taken the dish away. The other man soaped it up, rinsed it off, and racked it. And then he stood there with his wet hands raised over the sink, staring at the wall while the water drops pinged dully against the metal.

“Hey, Nesta. It was good—” Zlatan started, shuffling one foot about.

Nesta flicked his fingers at the sink. “Sandro,” he muttered. He looked over at Zlatan, then turned fully about and put his wet hands on either side of Zlatan’s waist, his head tipping back. “Sandro.”

God knew what Zlatan had been going to reply to that, except that it probably would’ve been stupid but the most damn honest he’d ever been, and it wasn’t really a saving grace that Ne—Sandro kissed it away. Then Sandro stepped forward, pressing the length of his body to Zlatan, and Zlatan groaned at himself and slid his good hand into Sandro’s hair, twisting his fingers in the silky tangle. Sandro’s hands slid up his back and in their wake the fabric of Zlatan’s shirt stuck to Zlatan’s skin, damp with transferred water. Some of it even soaked through to the bandages and that couldn’t be good for the stitches, but instead of caring, Zlatan hooked his broken arm around Sandro, pushing the hard edge of the cast into the other man’s back.

Sandro didn’t seem to care either, arching and sucking more greedily at Zlatan’s mouth. He tasted like his pasta, creamy with a sharp acid edge, but the longer Zlatan kissed him, the more the two melded together till it was hard to know when the lure ended and the intoxication began. Zlatan pushed him back against the counter, pinning him when he tried to arch, and Sandro twisted his head nearly parallel with the floor and bit the side of Zlatan’s mouth. Snorting and hissing, Zlatan dragged his hand out of Sandro’s hair and across his cheek, then forced his thumb between their mouths. When it was good and wet, he stroked it down Sandro’s jaw, down the middle of the man’s long elegant throat to rub it into the little dimple between Sandro’s collarbones and he felt the flush starting to rise in the other man, hot beneath the ball of his thumb.

But the moan got out quicker, squeezing itself roughly from between them as Sandro nudged up his hips against Zlatan. He dragged his hooked fingers down Zlatan’s back, then bumped them away from the counter and kept on pushing till they were in the dark hall. Half his face was in light, half in dark, and he lived up to the sight as he drew blood from Zlatan’s lip and then teased it into his own mouth. His hands pulled at Zlatan’s shirt, then slipped up beneath it the moment the tails were free of the waistband.

They stumbled into some closet, or maybe it was the toilet—Zlatan didn’t get a good look at the contents and didn’t know where the hell they were in the house—before Zlatan managed to get Sandro up against the wall. He hit his cast on that too and hissed, wincing, and then he cursed outright as his side twinged. Sandro took a sharp breath, his hands going still on Zlatan. Then he pushed down on Zlatan’s shoulders—not hard, but persistent and annoying and fuck, the man never stopped.

In the end Zlatan sat down, awkward as it was when parts of his body were complaining at every movement and other parts were screaming for the feel of Sandro’s body, for the pressure of it against him. He lost a lot of that on the way down, but then they were solidly on the floor—or he was, since Sandro had immediately slid onto Zlatan’s thighs, his knees bumping Zlatan’s hips and his hands carefully working around Zlatan’s bandages to get the clothing out of the way. His mouth wasn’t so dainty, impatient and brutal on Zlatan’s lips and jaw and back to lips, and then he was getting up on his knees, one hand on Zlatan’s shoulder as he twisted out of his own trousers. The light slanting through the door stroked over the curve of his ass, the slope of his thigh, and then Zlatan followed it with his hand, closing his eyes and seeing the shape still glimmering against the backs of his eyelids.

Sandro banged open the sink cabinet—so they were in the bathroom—and took care of the preliminaries, his mouth shuddering against Zlatan’s neck as he strained to relax. Then he was all the way down on Zlatan’s prick and Zlatan grabbed at the other man, forcing Sandro forward so he could muffle a gasp in the other man’s shoulder. He ground his cast into Sandro’s back, trying not to move because he didn’t want his side twinging more than it was, and Sandro also put a hand over the wound, but that didn’t help much because the more Sandro touched him, did to him, the more Zlatan wanted. Finally he bit Sandro’s shoulder, tasting something of the man’s skin through the starchy shirt, and closed his eyes again and jammed his feet against the floor, and then he managed to stay still.

And Sandro moved, doing what Zlatan couldn’t, and when he couldn’t anymore, he clutched at Zlatan’s head and fell onto it, his breath coming in raspy hard bursts as he shook. His thighs seized up in spasms against Zlatan’s legs, then slowly relaxed into a boneless sprawl as he sank down into Zlatan’s arms. Zlatan barely knew what was going on, caught up in his own climax, but he knew enough to not let go of the other man.

* * *

“Huh,” was all Sandro said when he saw Gilardino knotted around Mauro, like the other man was trying to crawl into Mauro’s skin. Both of them seemed to be sleeping, so they were probably all right for the moment. Good for them; Zlatan felt like shit.

He tugged Zlatan away from the door and further down the hall. Except for two rooms, theoretically all the bedrooms were open—everyone had their own homes or apartments and stayed over as they needed to, though of course people had rooms they liked and tended to keep a few personal items in them—as long as the beds weren’t completely full. Zlatan’s room was technically only his and he had a different key to it, though obviously some people didn’t pay attention to that and Zlatan was not going to dwell on them because he had to focus again. He’d had his fun with Sandro, and now he had to go back to facing the music whether he liked the tune or not.

The other exception was the big master bedroom at the end of the hall, which also had a different lock on it and which, the one time Zlatan had gotten a few seconds to try it, was much harder to pick than the other locks in the house. Sandro took them to that one, unlocked the door and then led them inside.

It was mostly Sandro’s, Zlatan concluded after his first gaze around. The black coat draped over the nearest chair was Sandro’s, and somehow the gun-cleaning kit open on the table seemed like him too. But the boxes of chocolate in various stages of consumption gave Zlatan pause till Sandro absently tossed a bonbon into his mouth on the way to the bathroom. Actually, Zlatan still was a little disbelieving, but he _had_ seen it.

He sat down on the bed, then laid down. A little too fast, and his side complained again, but his exhaustion rapidly numbed all the pain and he was just dozing off when Sandro returned to poke at him. Zlatan winced and swore, then collapsed back so Sandro had to work to get at his side. The other man sighed loudly, but changed the dressing without a word.

At that point Paolo came in. He stopped by the closet to rattle the clothes hangers, then went over to the bed and prodded the bandages so Zlatan swiped at him. And caught something of Paolo’s so Sandro snapped at him, but Paolo dismissed it with a strained chuckle. “So it’s not that bad.”

“Not yet,” Zlatan grunted. He heaved himself a little farther from the others, hoping that that was it with checking him over. “Keep sticking your finger in it and then we’ll see.”

Paolo breathed in sharply. The mattress sank down near Zlatan’s head. “My God, you didn’t need to do that. You…”

“Yes, I rely on the fact that I’m really fucking hard to take down and I don’t spend a lot of time on any thinking. But anyway, it’s done so can we not talk about it? That’s pretty pointless now,” Zlatan said. He knew that that hadn’t been where Paolo was going, but he also knew that Paolo would buy his supposed misinterpretation. And pretending to be wounded when he was actually that made him feel slightly less bad. “What are you doing with Van Persie?”

Sandro started to say something, but stopped so suddenly that Zlatan opened his eyes, thinking maybe the other man was going to do his firecracker impression again. But no, actually…actually Sandro was in the middle of rearranging himself and Paolo, pushing one of Paolo’s legs back on the mattress to lie along Zlatan while he cushioned his head on the other thigh. He swung up his own legs and pushed them back into Zlatan’s; Zlatan lifted a foot and Sandro slid his toes over Zlatan’s other ankle, then hooked his foot around Zlatan’s calf. He didn’t seem to mind that Zlatan put his foot back down on top of his leg.

Paolo gazed down at Sandro, chewing a bit at his lip. He pulled up his knee so Sandro’s hips rolled into Zlatan and dropped his hand down on the pillows for support, just above Zlatan’s head. His other shoulder was moving back and forth and Zlatan had a suspicion that Paolo was playing with Sandro’s hair, or something like that. “We made contact with Van Basten. He tried to claim he had no idea where Gigi was, but went quiet when he heard we have Van Persie. We’re meeting tomorrow in the cathedral to do a trade. Gianluigi plus that damn champagne shipment for Van Persie.”

“Another meeting? Right after he tried to kill you this afternoon?” Sandro muttered.

“You want to leave Gigi with him for a few days? I can tell you from experience that Van Basten’s attentions aren’t pleasant.” The corner of Paolo’s mouth that Zlatan could see curled sharply, and for a moment Paolo stared off to the side, face hard and cold that of an ice statue.

Sandro stirred uneasily, his arm moving as he grabbed some part of Paolo. His body said he wanted to take what he’d said back, but his mouth couldn’t quite get to it.

Of course Paolo looked down, and saw all of that in the man’s face and immediately, wordlessly forgave him. He quirked his mouth and glanced at Zlatan; something touched Zlatan’s hair before Zlatan moved his head away. The quirk in Paolo’s mouth briefly flattened. “You don’t have to go, and I’d rather you didn’t. I—no, look, what I personally want aside, I need you back fit as soon as possible. I don’t know how Gigi is, but I doubt he’ll be in any condition to go out immediately, and that just leaves me with Sandro. And if I didn’t still have him…honestly, Lippi and I would be on the phone to Luciano right now.”

Zlatan barely avoided sucking in his breath. He’d—well, he’d fucking known, even if Paolo hadn’t said anything. He couldn’t leave things half-done, not at this stage, not if he wanted any good to come of it, and so there it was. “Oh.”

“I’m sorry,” Paolo said. “I know where you’d like to be.”

“Do you,” Zlatan mumbled. Very quietly, so Paolo didn’t hear. He pressed his forehead into Paolo’s hip and hooked his arm over Sandro, and thought that he _hated_ his job right now. Then he made himself take a breath and raise his voice. “Well, yeah, so you’d better not fuck up. Because then there’s nobody to make me stay inside.”

Paolo laughed, and Sandro let out a snort that wasn’t entirely sarcastic, and Zlatan just wanted to bury his head in the mattress and scream.

* * *

The next day, everyone seemed to wake up edgy. Even Inzaghi lost his silent calm and snapped at Gilardino for accidentally leaving the milk out of the icebox, and Gila actually snarled back. Both of them shut up when Paolo poked his head into the kitchen, but the moment he left, they were on opposite sides of the room.

Mauro came down for breakfast, but the effort left him so pale and shaky that Luca carried him right back upstairs. Still, he apparently was going to stick around when the other wounded men had all been driven to their homes during the night, and so Zlatan’s bedroom was out of the question. The rest of the house wasn’t that full compared to how it usually was, but enough people were around so that Zlatan always seemed to find somebody else in the room with him. He snorted and made crass jokes and generally was as unpleasant as possible, but instead of making them go away, it seemed to make them think that they needed to “check his injuries” or suggest he lie down. Or just keep following him around, looking like a broken little puppy stubbornly trying to drag itself out for the daily walk.

“God, I’m fine. Shouldn’t you be planning for what’s going on this afternoon?” Zlatan finally said to Gilardino. He rummaged around in his pocket till he found the pack of gum and pulled that out. Then he held up the pack to his mouth and tugged out a strip with his teeth; he couldn’t use his other hand since Sandro somehow knew whenever Zlatan took his arm out of the sling and would pop up till Zlatan put it back.

“I’m not doing that much. Just watching the front again.” Gilardino fidgeted with his sleeves and stared down at the ground. He didn’t sound bitter so much as anxious. “There’s not a lot for me to do till we get Gigi back.”

Zlatan chomped down hard and the wad of gum unexpectedly yielded so his teeth painfully clicked together. He grimaced and kicked out at the nearest chair before spinning himself into it. “He’s probably annoying the hell out of them, you know,” he muttered.

Personally he didn’t think he would’ve convinced a ten-year-old girl right now, but Gilardino seemed to swallow the lie fine. The other man mustered up a brief but grateful smile, Zlatan irritably jerked himself around, and then he bit down on his tongue as a long sigh came from behind him.

“I’m sorry. I know I’m bothering you. I just—I don’t know what else to _do_ ,” Gilardino said. He probably was wringing his hands, the way his uncertain voice was wringing Zlatan’s gut. “It’s _Gigi_. And…and how did they know? We kept everything secret, and…if somebody as good as him can get taken, then…what kind of—”

“You’re depressing.” Zlatan got up and stalked out of the room.

He heard Gilardino exclaim something, then start following and so he walked faster, almost whipping himself around the corner. Luckily the rest of the hall wasn’t occupied, so Zlatan quickly sidestepped into a closet and closed the door. He waited two minutes, then went back out when he was sure Gilardino had gone out of earshot.

Not that he had much choice then on where to go. Already somebody else was coming down the opposite end of the hall, and of the two other doors within darting range, one of them led to Inzaghi’s study. The other one was the door to the basement, and in the end it was the one Zlatan used. He paused on the top step, letting his eyes adjust to the dimmer light, and then slowly started down the groaning steps of unfinished wood.

The whole basement was like that, all concrete and exposed pipes in stark contrast to the elegant upstairs. It was a little curious that someone like Paolo wouldn’t have finished the place—especially given its enormous size—but then Zlatan rounded the corner and noted the gunracks on the walls. Even Paolo wasn’t blind to the grim realities of life, and he certainly wasn’t going to be taken unprepared.

It didn’t look like anybody else was the basement so Zlatan started violently at the faint clanking sound. He jerked towards the nearest rifle, then stopped and listened more carefully. Then he took his arm out of the sling, grabbed a crowbar from the corner and silently, slowly made his way towards the noise. A couple times he had to stop and wait for it, as it only came in short, furious bursts, but eventually he found himself standing before a door. The door went into a small room built of wood sheets that had been nailed to the support beams, and inside the room, Van Persie was chained hand and foot to a pipe running along the floor on one side. When Zlatan came in, he was just collapsing back from his exertions, but he straightened up in a hurry to glare at Zlatan. As much as he could—he didn’t have the leeway for more than kneeling.

Zlatan glanced out the door, checking for anyone else, and then turned back as he leaned against the jamb. It was a little strange that there weren’t guards, but the only way out was up the stairs and that came out in the middle of the house. And Gilardino aside, everyone else was busy working two or three people’s jobs. “Huh. You don’t look too bad. Better than Buffon did, anyway.”

“I knew you didn’t mean it. Honestly, anyone who—” Van Persie cut himself off, belatedly looking chagrined. But that didn’t last too long and in another couple of seconds he went back to jerking wildly at his chains. He did that till he twisted something and fell back, hissing. “Bastard.”

“Van der Vaart’s not taking up the slack I left too well, is he?” Zlatan said, grinning. He waited through Van Persie’s dirty look to the other man dropping his head and staring at his bruised wrists, unable to contradict Zlatan. “Well, Van Basten’s fault for running off Van Nistelrooy and leaving you so shorthanded. If he’d kept Ruud you wouldn’t have needed to hire me in the first place.”

Van Persie glanced up again, and the heat in his eyes all but singed Zlatan’s skin, but he was getting tired. This time he couldn’t keep it up for more than a breath before he sagged back, his shoulders drooping and the skin around his mouth turning a little grey.

“Look, it’s just you and me, and you always knew I don’t care who pays me as long as they do pay me. You can admit Van Basten was a moron.” Zlatan flipped the crowbar around and stuck it under his arm. Then he jerked his chin at Van Persie. “Or if not, at least have the guts to say so. Come on. Deny it.”

“Oh…fuck off, Ibra. I don’t want to get into that,” Van Persie finally muttered. He sank back against the pipe, wincing, and tried to rub his fingertips under the wrist-cuffs, but the flesh around the metal had swollen too much from his struggling. The muscle in his jaw tightened and he looked bitterly up at Zlatan. “I guess this means you aren’t here to suddenly save _me_ , since you’re being such an ass.”

The crowbar slipped a little and Zlatan pushed it back beneath his arm. “Well, it depends. I don’t think you look as good as Maldini did in chains, and I never really wanted to fuck you anyway, but—”

Van Persie was already catching on, though he didn’t quite believe in it. He pushed himself up a little, his eyes narrowing. “Highest bidder?”

“Isn’t Van Basten or you. And don’t go thinking that Van Basten’s gotten himself a guardian angel. You’re smart. You can tell which way the tide’s going, even if you owe him some—”

“I just don’t want to be a part of it,” Van Persie said sharply. He bit his lip, then ducked his head to rub his nose along his awkwardly-crooked arm. Then he sighed, looking straight ahead. “I’m not selling him out. I owe it to him to be…that loyal. I just…”

Zlatan shrugged. This part wasn’t going as badly as he’d been thinking, though of course he didn’t _like_ Van Persie. And he was going to have to watch that, not get himself distracted and drag this out just because he didn’t want to get to the part that really mattered, the truly tricky part. “Fine, whatever you say. But let’s say you can just…walk off the job. You put in your years—hell, he owes you since he should’ve gotten you set up in your own operation by now instead of getting you stuck in his war. Right?”

“So what are you saying?” Van Persie arched his brows. “Who’s the guardian angel? Not you, I bet. You’re a little shop-soiled for that.”

“And you’re not as charming as you think, but that’s neither here nor there,” Zlatan snorted. The crowbar and Van Persie’s high cheekbones were tempting, but he made himself push the thought out of his mind. “There’s this French Cardinal you might remember. Wenger.”

That clearly hadn’t been what Van Persie had been expecting. He blinked a few times, then sucked in his breath, eyes widening. “Holy shit, Arsène? But he’s in—”

“Paris for about three months of the year, and London for the rest. Way, way across the great big Atlantic. This beginning to sound attractive?” Zlatan asked.

“Depends,” Van Persie said. His upper lip curled, then stayed that way as he went on. “For what?”

Zlatan wiggled the crowbar, then smiled broadly when Van Persie’s eyes immediately shot to it. He slouched a little against the doorway. “They’re trading you for Buffon—”

“—who we don’t have. You should—I was—” The light dawned. Given Van Persie’s condition, it was a gritty, bruised kind of light, but a light nonetheless. “I was telling them you’d ran into us, and that if Buffon hadn’t shown up with you…and I wasn’t lying, but they didn’t fucking believe me. You told them not to. You told them you got to us after we’d stashed Buffon, didn’t you? And when we don’t have him. Do we?”

“Stop saying ‘we,’ and no, Van Basten doesn’t. But he went ahead and acted like he did, because he’s an arrogant shit and he thinks he can trick Maldini into giving you back for just the champagne. But where Buffon is now isn’t _your_ problem,” Zlatan said, leaning forward. He wiped the smile off his face and looked at Van Persie, watching for every little tic and twitch.

“I see,” Van Persie said after a long, long moment. He tipped his head to the side, still thinking. Then he gave himself a shake and looked up, a blank expression carefully settling on his face. “The next time I see you I’m still going to break every bone in your body for putting me through this.”

Zlatan rolled his eyes and let the crowbar drop into his hand, then began swinging it. “Van Persie, I could do that to you with my little finger.”

“Yeah, go ahead and gloat when I’m _chained up_. You had plenty of chances to prove it when I wasn’t, but you’re such a fucking cow—”

“What are you doing?” Sandro said, coming up beside Zlatan. He poked his head in the room and checked on a suddenly tight-lipped Van Persie before looking curiously at Zlatan. Irritation was dragging the corners of his mouth down, but he was actually starting to put his hands on Zlatan’s arms before Zlatan stepped away.

Sandro opened his mouth, then shook his head and just pulled the door shut. He stared till Zlatan dropped the crowbar. Then he seemed ready to start the scolding, but at the last moment he changed his mind again and just pushed them back upstairs. On the way they passed Pirlo, who had a hip flask and half a calzone with him and Sandro had a quick, sharp word with him about leaving his post, but even that was shorter than it normally would’ve been.

“I went through all that trouble,” Zlatan said as they came out on the first floor. “I just wanted to see how the bastard was.”

“He’s—” An annoyed sigh dropping from him, Sandro turned to look at the approaching Toni. “What.”

Luca had some question about cars they were using, which Sandro curtly answered in short sentences. Then he turned back to Zlatan, but he’d barely started when Gilardino, who’d finally gotten something to do, came with a query. After that, Zlatan pulled them into the washing room and Paolo was there, mysteriously clucking over random shirts he pulled out of the hamper. Eventually, after some discussing of entryways to the cathedral, he explained to Sandro that he was thinking of having them all dress alike since it was going to be broad daylight and since the cathedral was neutral ground—since Figo didn’t take payoffs from anybody—they didn’t have much control over possible witnesses. It did make sense, but the way Paolo talked about it and kept digging around in the dirty clothes like a feverish housewife made Zlatan think it was more about nerves than anything else.

“I’m going to go and get a coffee at the corner place,” Zlatan finally said.

Paolo and Sandro stopped what they were doing and turned to look at him, identical expressions of disbelief on their faces. The current shirt slipped from Paolo’s hands and drifted onto the piles strewn about his feet.

“No,” he said, blinking.

Sandro was a little more sure of himself since he didn’t bother thinking about how Zlatan would take things. “No. Are you crazy? You’re—”

“I’m not going to run off again. I’ll sit here and bite my fucking nails while you do all the work, I swear. But I just—you’re all running around _doing_ things and I need to get outside for a half-hour, okay? _This_ is driving me crazy,” Zlatan snapped, throwing up his arms. Of course Sandro looked at his broken one right away, which only irritated Zlatan more so he yanked it away, jerking himself towards the hall. “That. That right there. With the—the looking, and the poking at me all the time, and the—”

“You’ve got a good point,” Paolo said. He looked like he’d wanted to be quiet about it, but Sandro’s sudden step forward had forced him to raise his voice. He didn’t quite lift his hand, but the way he glanced at Sandro just about did the same thing. The two of them had some kind of argument with their eyes before Sandro fell back, rolling his head up to snort at the ceiling. “I’m sorry we’ve—I don’t think we realized you’d take it as harassment.”

Zlatan put up his hand and squeezed his nose, then ground a knuckle between his eyebrows. He had about five witty retorts to that, but somehow he didn’t feel like delivering any of them. And that had to be suspicious, and goddamn it, Van Persie had guessed it so why the hell hadn’t Paolo?

“You want coffee, there’s a pot—” Sandro started.

“Oh, to hell with the coffee. It’s not about the _coffee_. It’s—I want—” The wrong words popped to Zlatan’s lips and he hastily strangled them, letting them die in strange grinding sounds. He knew he didn’t look right, didn’t act right and he put up his hands, but couldn’t do more than just wave them about a bit and that wasn’t going to look any better. “Son of a _bitch_.”

Paolo grabbed one of Zlatan’s hands as it passed him, then pulled it down and stepped forward at the same time. But Sandro got in first, surprisingly enough. He was all hunched shoulders and he wasn’t looking Zlatan in the eye but it was his tense, brusque voice. “All right, let’s go.”

“What?” Zlatan said.

“You want coffee? So let’s go and I’ll buy you the damn cup, if you can’t stand Pirlo’s stuff,” Sandro muttered. He made as if to take Zlatan by the arm, but he never took his hands off his hips so it ended up looking more like an aborted elbow-jab. “Fifteen minutes. That’ll give Gila enough time to finish calming down and remember he knows how to work a damn gun.”

After a moment, Paolo nodded. He didn’t look too happy about it, but he didn’t argue for some reason, which maybe was related to the way Sandro was grinding his teeth.

He did hang onto Zlatan’s hand a little longer, glancing at it and then pulling it up a few inches before he finally let it go. Then he leaned over and put his hand to Sandro’s jaw, turning the other man’s head so their cheeks briefly pressed together. “Fifteen minutes,” he muttered, and with uncharacteristic abruptness, left it at that.

Sandro looked up at Zlatan, then jerked his head towards the door. “Well?”

“Yeah,” Zlatan mumbled, dragging out the word. He felt like he was walking through miles of water to get to the door, but he still got to it too soon. And then, somehow, he and Sandro were on the sidewalk and goddamn it. He’d done his job too well this time.

* * *

The coffeeshop was a little too crowded for both Zlatan and Sandro’s tastes, but before Zlatan could suggest they walk on to the next one, Sandro had swung himself through the door with a muttered ‘be right back.’ Normally Zlatan would’ve snorted and plunged after, and also gotten to the counter first just to show Sandro the proper way to be a rude bastard, but today he just stood outside and kicked his heels.

There must’ve been something interesting on the radio since the streets were empty, Zlatan thought as he looked about. He idly noted the way the chilly breezes were whipping up into screaming gusts about every five minutes, and then he let his gaze wander over the cars parked along the road. But he kept getting distracted and having to force himself away from some piece of paper blowing down the sidewalk, or some rattling branch, or—he jumped, then whipped about just as a startled Sandro took a step back.

“You’re nervous,” Sandro helpfully observed. He handed Zlatan one of the steaming paper cups he was holding, then paused to pull his coat more tightly about himself before beginning to drink his own.

Zlatan bit his lip. When he took his first sip, the hot liquid burned deep into the teeth-marks. “Let’s go into the alley. The wind’s not so bad there.”

Sandro didn’t object. Not even because the suggestion had come from Zlatan. He simply went around the corner, paused at the alley mouth, and then went in once he’d deemed it was safe. There were a few cars parked in it, but otherwise it was empty.

It was quiet except for the occasional howl of the wind. After the first minute, Sandro got tired of standing and perched himself on the rear bumper of a parked truck, holding onto his coffee with both hands. He looked up briefly when Zlatan got on next to him, then bent over his cup. The sleeves of his coat were folded as far over his hands as he could stretch them, and the parts of his fingers that were still sticking out were red at the tips. The irritation had gone from his face, but the deep-drawn lines about his mouth remained. He looked far too beautiful for somebody with his moody temper.

“If this doesn’t work, I think we’re dead,” Sandro suddenly said. He flicked his eyes to Zlatan, then ducked his head and tipped the rest of his coffee into his mouth. Quickly, so Zlatan didn’t have time to see what his expression was.

Zlatan still had half a cup left, but he set his aside on the truck-bed and then turned back. He reached up and touched Sandro’s right cheek, watching the groove appear and disappear between Sandro’s brows, and then leaned forward to trap the traces of Sandro’s frown with his mouth. Sandro stiffened—this was a public street—but then suddenly, achingly folded into Zlatan, his lips opening and his hands coming about to lie against Zlatan’s sides. He closed his eyes and Zlatan slid his arm about Sandro’s neck, letting his hand drop so the point of the knife dug into Sandro’s skin right above the throat artery.

It took a moment for Sandro to notice. And then he went still—completely still, frozen in that moment with his tongue limp in Zlatan’s mouth and his hands rigid against Zlatan’s side. He might not have even breathed, though after getting the handcuff on the first wrist, Zlatan had to fumble to get Sandro’s slack arm behind him and then to nudge Sandro’s other arm back to the point where he could get the other cuff on without having to take the knife away. Though at some point Sandro did open his eyes, because Zlatan looked up after securing the man and found Sandro staring at him.

He wasn’t even mad, Zlatan thought, and seeing that made him a little rougher than he had to be with jerking the loop of Sandro’s tie loose and then pulling it up for a gag. Not mad, and not exactly stunned now, with that comprehension smarting from his eyes, and then Zlatan gave the gag a tug he didn’t need to, jerking Sandro’s head violently backward, and it actually was Zlatan who winced. Sandro just rocked back, then forward, and then let Zlatan haul him off the bumper and down the alley, to a less conspicuous car. No fighting, just like with Buffon, but the _staring_.

Zlatan shoved Sandro up against the car and finally some sort of rage came into the man’s face. He made a muffled grunt and tried to elbow himself off the car as Zlatan began picking the door-lock, and when Zlatan threw a leg before him, he pushed back and nearly fell. Then Zlatan tried to put him in the backseat and Sandro really started struggling, and Zlatan hadn’t wanted to do it but he hit the other man hard on the temple to knock him out.

Sandro twisted as he fell so Zlatan could see his face, could see the way the awareness left the man’s eyes as they rolled back in his head. Then he was limp, his legs trailing out the door, and Zlatan looked down and saw his hands were shaking. His throat hurt as well because he wanted to say something, but he couldn’t even if there would’ve been a point to it. But he did go and get his coffee, and toss it viciously back before he pushed Sandro the rest of the way into the car. Somehow nobody came and caught him.

The drive to the cathedral by itself was longer than fifteen minutes, but it wasn’t like Zlatan really wanted to go back and lie to Paolo again. He didn’t want to be hauling Sandro through the back-door either, but he savaged his lip and managed it. Then Luís came, attracted by all the noise Zlatan was making, and together they got Sandro into Luís’ private quarters. By then Zlatan was swearing constantly and his throat was not only aching but also dry as hell.

“Don’t—” Luís said, hastily getting up from the bed.

Zlatan jerked his hand away from the bathroom door. A second later, the door rattled violently from a ferocious blow on the other side, and over the sound of that, very faintly, Zlatan could hear a familiar grunting. “So he’s okay.”

“In a manner of speaking. I was expecting Gianluigi, of all of them, to be a little more reasonable.” As he bent back over the bed, Luís rubbed the side of his face and Zlatan noticed the dark circles beneath the other man’s eyes. He adjusted the sheet over Sandro, then checked the sturdiness of the headboard, where Sandro’s hands were now cuffed. “I’ve gotten a call from Lippi already, letting me know that this holy church will shortly be graced with such luminaries as Van Basten, Lucky Luciano and possibly even Dutch Schultz.”

“Lip—” Frowning, Zlatan spun and looked at the clock at the wall, but for some reason he couldn’t understand it. He saw the numbers and the clock-hands, but his brain couldn’t put things together till he’d slapped his hand against his temple. Then, very slowly, it came to him. “Already? But—then as soon as the fifteen minutes were up, and someone got down there and we weren’t…”

Luís didn’t say anything, though he did start when Zlatan spun and kicked the nearest piece of furniture. Zlatan walked out the door while he could, snarling something about how he didn’t give a damn where he left dents, and Luís didn’t follow.

Of course, Zlatan couldn’t leave the church now. He did walk back and forth by the doors, thinking about it, but eventually he figured out he was just fucking looking for Paolo, or Mauro, or maybe even Inzaghi—somebody to guess what the hell had happened and come running. When he’d set it up so that that wouldn’t happen, and he was just being an idiot. He was too far in and couldn’t just stop now, hoping that it’d all go away and everyone would act like nothing had ever happened. For one, there was a serious gang war going on, with a lot of powerful people interested in its outcome, and two—forget it. He knew all of that and he knew all he could do now was see things through and then…see.

But till then, it was going to be a fucking long wait.

* * *

“Well, I’ll leave a message with one of the girls afterward. If I really need to, I might stay over at your penthouse for a few nights,” Zlatan said. High up in the cathedral, the bells began to ring and Zlatan paused to count the peals. He converted that to the time, then pushed himself up in the chair and reached for the telephone stand. “Listen, Helena, I’ve got to go.”

*I’ll see if I can get back a day early and meet you at the penthouse.* She paused and the sound of her breathing went away for a moment. Then she sighed, like she usually did when she was biting back a warning. *Don’t make me meet you in the hospital again, Zlatan. I hate how those places smell, and their dry air does horrid things to your hair.*

Zlatan picked up the stand and pressed the top of it to his mouth. A few weak chuckles escaped him anyway. “Yeah, I know. Anyway, have fun upstate. I have to go work now.”

He hung the receiver back on its little hook, then swung himself out of the seat. The grumbling of a lot of car engines on the street was slowly beginning to filter into the church, and when Zlatan twitched aside the curtains to look out a window, he saw the back of Paolo’s head. He winced and dropped the curtain. 

But after a moment, Zlatan couldn’t help but peek out again, his teeth grinding down on his lip. He watched Paolo help a man who had to be Lippi out of a car and so got a look at Lippi that the G-men would’ve killed their mothers for. Paolo’s hair was a mess, Zlatan absently thought, and then caught himself raking a hand through his own hair.

The squeak of the door hinges made Zlatan jerk about, but he relaxed when he saw that it was just Figo. “How are they?”

Luís stopped in the doorway, an odd pinched expression going across his face. Then he came the rest of the way in and closed the door. “They’re awake. Nesta managed to chew through that tie and break my headboard. I had to move him to the bathroom with Buffon.”

“Did you explain things to him?” Zlatan asked, bleakly amused.

“Of course I did, but obviously he didn’t take it well. I’m supposed to be neutral and this is—this is a holy _church_ , damn it,” Luís snapped, abruptly turning away. He went over to his desk and started yanking drawers out and shoving them back out. “Are you sure—”

Zlatan slumped against the wall and swept his gaze tiredly about the room till he got to Luís’ chair, which had rolled away from the other man’s push to just within kicking range. But Zlatan refrained from that and just stuck his foot out, using his toes to poke at the chair till it was spinning slowly about on its base. “All right, all right, I’m sorry I dragged you into it. But it’s not like I could’ve used Helena’s place—it’s too far uptown. So what did you want me to do? Rent an apartment?”

“Oh, for God’s sake. I agreed to this.” Not that it sounded Luís meant that as an apology, or as anything but another snarl at Zlatan. He slammed one drawer back in so hard that a pen bounced out and fell to the floor. His eyes followed it down, and then he stood there looking at it, his hands clenching and unclenching. Luís’ shoulders jerked up, then slowly sagged as he bent down to pick up the pen. “Never mind, I’m…is this really how you want to do this?”

“Well, it’s a little late for me to change my mind now, isn’t it?” Zlatan muttered, looking outside again. “Van Basten’s here.”

“But…” The pen spun between Luís’ hands as he straightened and looked at Zlatan, all the anger gone from his face. In its place was a regretful look, as if he really had done anything wrong. “Zlatan…I thought you liked them.”

Zlatan sucked in a breath. Then he slammed himself off the wall and viciously kicked Luís’ chair out of his way. It careened off and rammed into something else, and Luís started scolding him, but Zlatan just flipped his hand over his shoulder. “I _do_ like them. That’s why I didn’t just _kill_ them, which would’ve been—look, can we just do this? I just want to get this over with. You can lecture me later.”

Luís breathed in sharply, then out slowly and softly. “All right.”

“And I’ll give you a check for the bed, the chair, whatever else. So that should make you happy,” Zlatan added.

“It doesn’t and you know that,” Luís snapped. Suddenly he was striding up alongside Zlatan, his robe whipping about his feet and his eyes boring deep into Zlatan with their fury. He wasn’t some cringing ‘father’ in a big black sack that hid all his flaws; when he’d first arrived, he’d been the fifth priest in as many years, and in the six years since then he’d managed to not only survive, but carve out an influential position for himself in one tough neighborhood. Sometimes his sense of humor made Zlatan forget that. “Zlatan, I’m going along with this because what I dearly want is peace and quiet, and space for people to love each other. And you said that this is how it will happen, and so I am trusting in that. So if you have a problem trusting yourself, I’d appreciate hearing about it _now_.”

Of course, Zlatan was reminded now. He blinked a few times, then ducked his head. “I don’t have a problem trusting myself. Christ, Luís. I’ve _never_ had a problem with that.”

Luís looked at him. Then he grabbed Zlatan’s arm and made them stop.

“I don’t, all right? And goddamn it, I can hear them coming—” Zlatan jerked at his arm, then sighed when it was obvious he wasn’t winning this one “—for God’s sake, Luís, I trust myself! I trust that I know what to do and when to do it, and if I fucking didn’t I wouldn’t—take the chances I have with Sandro and—and the rest of them. The _real_ problem’s that I don’t trust _them_ , okay? I’m going to do all of this and then they’re not going to understand. And I can’t blame them, but…this is what I have to do. All right? Now let. Go.”

He pulled at his arm again and this time Luís let him go. It still didn’t look like the other man was happy, with how he frowned and left his hand up with the fingers curled around thin air, but well, he wasn’t going to get any more from Zlatan. And they were coming in, the Italians and the Dutch, and if this had any chance of working, there couldn’t be any delays.

Zlatan spun on his heel and went for the nave. After the first few steps, he looked back, but Luís wasn’t there anymore. For a moment Zlatan’s throat closed on him, but then he roughly cleared it and made himself keep on walking. He needed to get to the nave before the negotiations really started and it got obvious that Van Basten really had nobody.

* * *

Lippi was doing most of the talking, with Paolo to his right and the others ranged behind him on the altar steps. At first Zlatan didn’t see Lucky Luciano anywhere, but then he spotted a bulky shadow behind one of the wooden lattices that screened off part of the side-aisles. It was across the church from him, so he didn’t try to cross over behind the altar but instead went up along the wall, edging his way towards where a scraped, bruised Van Persie was standing by…Gattuso? When the hell had Gattuso gotten back in town? He was still supposed to be in Italy doing recruiting.

Thankfully, that was the only nasty surprise on the Italian side. The Dutch had a minor one of their own in the person of Dutch Schultz himself, lounging in a pew about two rows back from Van Basten. The rest of the Dutch straggled out towards the doors, which were propped wide open so the bright white sunlight was spilling onto their backs. That gave them an advantage of visibility, though the Italians could cover all the exits besides the front door.

“…outside in the truck,” Van Basten finished. “You can get it when you leave.”

He waved his hand and Kuyt stood up, but Lippi shook his head and Gattuso slapped his hand on Van Persie’s shoulder, forcing him to sit down hard on a pew. Van Persie’s hands were cuffed behind his back and he teetered awkwardly on the bench.

Lippi began speaking and Paolo nodded slightly as a signal before he began to translate. “No. Exchange at the same time. And we want to see Gianluigi and S—Alessandro first before any deal goes through.”

“You’re lucky just to be getting the champagne,” Dutch Schultz suddenly called out. He tipped back his head—he was still wearing his fedora—so his broad smile could be seen. “Fuck, that stuff should’ve been ours anyway. You two-bit greasy-haired bitches bribed our man in Canada, and we were just taking it back.”

Paolo didn’t make a production of putting his hand on the side of one of the pews, but Zlatan looked there and saw the other man’s knuckles whitening. “Nothing till we see those two,” he translated. He paused, glancing at Lippi, and then cleared his throat. “And what did you do with Ibrahimović?”

Judging by Lippi’s change in expression, that’d been an ad-lib on Paolo’s part. And the pain in Zlatan’s gut increased about a thousand times, and even if everything went well he might end up in the hospital anyway with a fucking ulcer. Jesus.

“We don’t have them. If you can’t keep track of your own men, that’s not our problem,” Van Basten said. He continued to look straight ahead, even though Van Persie had hissed something and was straining forward, trying to get his attention. “We agreed to this meeting as a gesture of our goodwill, since all this fighting’s bad business for everyone. But if you don’t want to take our settlement—”

“You can take a hike. You don’t own this town,” Dutch Schultz sneered.

“Neither do you, Arthur.” Lucky Luciano finally swung out from his hiding place, accompanied by two burly bodyguards. He’d respectfully taken his hat off, but otherwise there wasn’t a speck of deference in his manner. When he came up the aisle, he didn’t even look to see if Lippi and Paolo would move aside—they both did—but instead gazed directly at Schultz. “We’re all in the same business, and we should all be working together. Not threatening each other. That’s not good for business either.”

Schultz definitely hadn’t been expecting him and stared, mouth open. Van Basten took several steps back before he realized what he was doing and stiffly drew himself up, but he wasn’t fooling anybody. He looked over his shoulder, but he wasn’t going to find any comfort in the faces of his men, who formed a stunning display of how silly people looked when they were in shock.

“You bastard,” Schultz finally said. His mouth slowly pulled shut, then into a humorless grin. He leaned forward, shaking his head. “You guinea bastard. You fucking son of a bitch. So you’re backing them?” Pause. Then Schultz threw himself up as if he were going to leap the intervening pews, his eyes bulging with rage. “ _You fucking piece of shit, you were always setting me up—_ ”

For once in his life, Van der Vaart did the sensible thing and held Schultz back. Then he turned around and he actually was the first one to see Zlatan walking out. His eyes widened and he gasped, stabbing his finger feverishly at Zlatan till everybody else looked.

Zlatan watched Van Basten’s face and Lucky Luciano’s, carefully excluding everyone else from his sight. He strolled up to stand just behind Luciano’s left, right next to Gattuso and Van Persie. Luciano smiled a little and Zlatan nodded, then took a quick step back as the other man returned to Schultz. Even without looking, Zlatan knew that nobody was going to be watching Van Persie’s hands and so he quickly dropped a straightened hairpin into them.

He knew Van Persie had gotten it when the other man suddenly slumped down in the pew, twisting so his hands were hidden from Gattuso’s view. It looked like Van Persie had gotten the message Van Basten’s ignoring him had sent.

“Ibrahimović,” Van Basten finally said.

“Never lied to you, you know. I go with the highest bidder, and you sure as hell weren’t that. Actually, I gave you a whole extra week on the cheap,” Zlatan said, shrugging. He rocked back on his heels, then forward.

Luciano smiled like a snake, thin and pleased, and nodded to Dutch Schultz. “Your operation here is gutted. You can take what’s left and move it to the territory the whole Combine agreed is yours, or we can show you out.”

“It’s not his, it’s—” Van Basten started, like an idiot. Then again, maybe he really did still think he was in “partnership” with somebody like Schultz.

If so, the vicious glare that Schultz sent him should’ve cleared that up. “Shut the fuck up, you fucking asshole. Shut up and get out. I’ll meet you at the—”

“You’ve caused a lot of trouble, Dutchie,” Luciano quietly said. “My men have already taken the truck and moved it to Maldini’s warehouses, and you will leave it there. Consider it your contribution to the peace fund.”

“ _Peace fund_.” Schultz was spraying spittle all over the place in his outrage. He yanked himself free of Van der Vaart and then stormed out of the aisle, coming all the way up to Luciano. Then he shook his fist in Luciano’s face, now completely incoherent, while Luciano simply smiled, smiled, smiled. “I’ll see about your fucking peace fund. Later. Then we’ll see if you’re the big king you think you are.”

But it was a hollow threat, and everyone knew it. Even though Schultz stayed there and hopped about in Luciano’s face for another couple of seconds before he whirled around, peremptorily waving at Van Basten’s men. One or two of them at least had the good grace to look at Van Basten first before they quietly trotted off after Schultz, but Van Basten himself just stood there, looking like somebody had stunned him with a shovel. Schultz was almost out of the building before the man finally shook himself and looked at Van Persie.

“He stays,” Luciano said. “I’m not stupid. You had your hands deep in this and you’ve mucked about in my property, so you have to pay.”

Zlatan looked at Van Persie as Van Basten opened his mouth, shut it, and then finally glanced over his shoulder to see nobody. Then Van Basten walked off with his own little comment in Dutch, which probably only Zlatan and Van Persie understood and which neither of them appreciated. And he also knocked the props from the doors so they slammed shut behind him, but that was just petty.

The sharp hurt on Van Persie’s face did make Zlatan feel a little sympathetic for the other man. Van Persie couldn’t even watch Van Basten leave, but ducked his head and breathed in slow hisses, but he did look up when Zlatan grabbed his shoulder. “I’m pretty sure that when you and Lippi were talking, you didn’t call it ‘your property’ then,” Zlatan said. He clicked back the safety on his gun and adjusted his aim so the muzzle was centered on Luciano’s left eye. “Sorry, but you didn’t have the biggest bankroll either.”

Luciano got over his surprise quickly enough. He didn’t bother watching his two bodyguards plus Gattuso level their guns at Zlatan’s head, or looking sideways when Paolo hissed at Gattuso to back off. “Excuse me?”

“Van Persie’s got a French date. He’s leaving.” Zlatan paused, then barely managed to keep himself from rolling his eyes. “ _Now_.”

The handcuffs dropped onto Zlatan’s foot as Van Persie belatedly slid off the pew. He ducked around Zlatan, then hurried into the side-aisle. If he knew what was good for him, he’d go to the back and not the front, but it wasn’t Zlatan’s problem whether or not Van Persie did go back to Van Basten. He’d completed everything he had to do under that contract, and so he moved slowly about, his gun always on Luciano, till he was standing next to Paolo.

“Some _French_ fuck is paying you?” Luciano incredulously said. He laughed in Zlatan’s face. “And you’re using your broken arm. Now, I think that the gun’s recoil would skew your shot just enough that you’d miss.”

“He would, but I wouldn’t.” Sandro stalked out from behind the altar, a shotgun leveled at Luciano’s head. Just behind him came Buffon with a tommy-gun dangling casually from his hand.

Paolo stifled an exclamation. It briefly distracted Sandro, but anyway, that didn’t matter since Buffon kept on going till he’d moved behind Luciano’s two bodyguards and had them covered. Luciano looked less amused now. “What the hell is going on here? I sent out my men because you said Van Basten took them—”

“He didn’t. I did,” Zlatan said. He smoothly, quickly swung his gun around to point at Paolo. They were so close that the muzzle tapped Paolo on the cheek, stopping him mid-turn so Zlatan could only see one stunned eye. But that was enough. “And you know, I don’t think I can miss from this range.”

“What the hell are you doing? Get that away from him!” Sandro snarled. His shotgun jerked wildly back and forth from Luciano to Zlatan and back. “Zlatan—”

One of Luciano’s bodyguards moved like he was going to take the opportunity, but froze when Buffon cleared his throat. “Don’t.”

The bodyguard moved back. Paolo stared at Zlatan, his hands at his sides and his mouth a little open. Sandro fell back against a railing, his shotgun pointed at Luciano but his eyes on Zlatan, and the other Italians all stood around in various stages of shock. Even Gattuso, who’d been yelping and nearly about to run up to Sandro when Zlatan had suddenly switched to Paolo.

It was Lippi who finally coughed, getting Zlatan’s attention. “So who exactly are we speaking to?”

“His Eminence the Cardinal of New York, Arrigo Sacchi.” Luís stepped out from the same place at which Luciano had entered, then moved aside for the Cardinal.

Sacchi bounded out, making his heavy robes look like they were made of tissue-paper, and beamed about at everyone as if there weren’t enough weaponry out to ventilate the entire cathedral. “Good afternoon, gentlemen.”

“Oh, God,” Lippi muttered.

“Now, now, there will be no blaspheming. Especially in light of the disorder and violence you’ve all already caused,” Sacchi said, turning stern. He spun slowly about to look at each of them directly in the face. And took a little longer with Luciano, whose jaw muscle was working even as a grimly amused glint came into his eye. “It’s grown so terrible that even in Rome, they’ve heard the cries for relief. And so I’ve come here, vested with the power of the Vatican, to broker a peace. Of course this isn’t to say that we condone your business or any of that nature…but our foremost concern is for the well-being of the flock, not the government.”

Luciano finally managed to present a straight face. “Well, of course, your Eminence. Actually, we were just in the middle of concluding a partnership.”

“Ah, really? Please tell me more.” The smile on Sacchi’s face was the smile of a kindly old grandfather, desperate for anything to make his day exciting. “And please, put away those nasty guns. I find they really don’t help negotiations all that much.”

And if anyone bought that, then Zlatan wasn’t going to bother hitting them on the head because it’d just be a waste of time. They could just be that stupid and lie to Sacchi, and then find out themselves what else the Church had up their sleeves.

Zlatan clicked the safety back on his gun, then jammed the pistol into the holster under his arm. Then he looked up, right into Sandro’s shotgun.

Over it, Sandro’s eyes were burning and his mouth was a razor-thin line, but he kept working his jaw. Then his hands started trembling and so the gun started to shake. His gaze dropped and he was already turning away when Sacchi cleared his throat.

“Also, I should mention that Zlatan Ibrahimović was at all times acting as an agent of the Vatican, and consequently we absolve him of all his actions and take their burden upon ourselves,” Sacchi said. He waited a moment, then folded his hands together and looked severely upon everyone. “In other words, retaliate against him for anything he did and we shall consider it an attack on ourselves. All right?”

“Thanks,” Zlatan muttered. He turned around, dropping his head to avoid seeing Paolo’s face, and sat down in the nearest pew. His suit-jacket got a bit rumpled up and he reached around to pull that down, then slouched back and stretched out his legs.

And then he enjoyed his nice view of the stained-glass altarpiece while Sacchi and Figo slowly chivvied everyone out to go to one of the meeting rooms. Actually, the view wasn’t that great. The lighter-colored pieces were clearly dirty from the smoke that drifted over from the factory quarters, and the whole design was just too static and flat for Zlatan’s tastes. The people looked like they all knew exactly how to be miserable, and that definitely was a lie because the point of misery was that it crept up from behind and then booted you in the ass.

Zlatan’s side hurt, and inside the cast his arm was aching so much that he wondered if maybe he should go get the bone reset later. He dug around in his pockets and came up with the bottle of morphine Luís had given him, but then put it back. He didn’t like the way the drug made him drowsy and slow-thinking, and also maybe, he thought, he should just put up with the pain for a while. It’d teach him to know better.

Then again, he’d never liked martyrs and he wasn’t about to start now. He did know better—he knew eventually he’d heal and he’d get too busy with the next thing to even remember this one. Maybe. Maybe he needed to do _something_ …Zlatan searched his pockets again and came up with a final stick of gum. He looked at it, squinting at the little bits of lint sticking to the wrapper, but finally decided it was okay to chew and unwrapped it. And promptly dropped the damn thing.

The little grey strip tumbled from his clumsy fingers and fell towards the floor, but at the last moment, a hand scooped beneath it. Then the hand rose and held out the gum towards Zlatan, who stared at it for a good twenty seconds. The hand patiently waited.

Finally Zlatan took it, but instead of putting it in his mouth, he folded it up between his thumb and forefinger, crushing the gum hard as Paolo sat down beside him. “Don’t tell me you’re done already.”

Paolo twisted sideways so he could rest his arm on the back of the pew. He looked straight at Zlatan, unblinking and steady, and it was just getting unnerving when he suddenly looked down between them. His hand was there on the comfortless thin cushion, and beneath it something was shining.

After another moment, he pushed it across and then took away his hand. “It’s to my house,” he said.

Zlatan looked at the key. “Does this mean you forgive me?”

To give him credit, Paolo needed a moment to think about it. “I suppose—”

“Then you’re an idiot. And I never asked you to do that anyway,” Zlatan snorted. He stuffed the gum in his mouth—and then accidentally swallowed it in his hurry—licked off his finger and thumb, and then reached down to flick the key back to Paolo. “Look, I did my job. More than my job, actually. They just told me to come here and get everyone to the point where they’d stop fighting. If I’d figured that meant getting you all to kill each other, that would’ve been fine too. And a lot easier.”

“—that I don’t forgive you now,” Paolo finished, very deliberately drawing out the words. He picked up the key, then dropped it by Zlatan’s hand. “You’ve gotten people I care very much about hurt, and threatened them and me, and put me through some of the worst moments of my life. I’d be lying if I didn’t want to say I want to lock us in a room and scream myself dumb at you, but…if I didn’t want you to stay, I wouldn’t want to yell at you. I’d just want to shoot you. I _would_ just shoot you.”

Zlatan looked up and found Paolo looking at him again, and the other man was angry but that wasn’t all there was to his expression, or his eyes, or the way he was talking. “You want me to stay because then you can yell at me? That’s a stupid reason.”

“And it’s not the real reason, and I know you’re smarter than this, Zlatan. Don’t act like I’m being something I’m not.” Paolo drummed his fingers against the top of the pew, then grabbed onto that and pulled himself closer by a few inches. He slid his other hand across the intervening space and then over Zlatan’s hand and the key, nudging the little bit of metal into Zlatan’s thumb. “I also know—now, anyway—that it didn’t stop with Sacchi, did it? He wasn’t the highest bidder. Not really.”

“You aren’t either,” Zlatan said. His voice sounded thick so he swallowed, and then found that that hurt.

Paolo raised his eyebrows. He had that smoothness to his face, that calm confident look he got whenever he thought he had the deal all closed up and the exits all covered. “I think right now I am.”

“Funny. Very funny. I’m a whore, so I won’t get offended when you treat me like one. Yeah, that’s exactly it. Jesus!” Zlatan yanked his hand from beneath Paolo’s, then slapped it down on the top of the pew and pushed himself to his feet. “Has no one ever told you just how _annoying_ it is when you start in with that I’m-God-so-you-listen act? It’s so—”

He spun around and Sandro was standing right there, so close that Zlatan’s shoulder bashed Sandro in the eye. The other man swore and hit at Zlatan, even though Zlatan was already stepping back, and then dropped his hip hard against the side of the pew. Sandro bent over, rubbing at his eye, and Paolo touched him on the shoulder and started to ask how he was doing. But before he could finish, Sandro had jerked back up to glare at Zlatan. “Do you know how annoying it is when you take everything as an insult? He was trying to say he respects your independence, you thick-headed ass!”

“Sandro,” Paolo said, faintly reproving.

Sandro snorted and glanced at him, then at the key in Paolo’s hand. Then he slowly turned back to Zlatan. His shoulders hunched back and he pushed irritably at his hair, looking at some point about level with Zlatan’s shoulder. Then he flicked his eyes back to Zlatan’s face. “So…basically, you’re a professional nuisance.”

“For the _Vatican_. Among other very important people and organizations, and…honestly, I don’t call you a dirty no-good bootlegger, do I?” Zlatan muttered.

“You like your job?” Sandro asked.

Zlatan looked hard at him, but only found serious interest and a simmering irritation in the other man’s face. “Yeah, usually. It pays well and I get to travel.”

“But you need a break once in a while, don’t you? Traveling too much can be rough on a man, and then it’s nice to have somewhere you can return to whenever you need to,” Paolo said. He shifted down to the end of the pew so his head was by Sandro’s elbow. “Zlatan. Even without your services, we’d still like to see you-- _I’d_ like to see you come back. You’ll be missed.”

It looked like Paolo meant what he was saying, and for some reason Zlatan didn’t understand, Sandro wasn’t violently objecting. “ _Why_?”

“Because for some godawful reason, he likes you.” Sandro jerked his chin at Paolo, who briefly struggled with amusement and annoyance. “Adriana likes you. Gigi likes you, Mauro and Gila like you-- _I_ like you, goddamn it. And I want you to stay, and I want to yell at you and punch your fucking nose for what you’ve done lately, and if that isn’t enough, how about how much you owe us? Forget that stupid highest-bidder nonsense Paolo was talking about—you put us all through hell and you owe us something for that.”

“You, through hell? What about me? And anyway, that’s an even stupider reason. I’m supposed to stay and…and make you feel better? Sometimes I think a truckload of sunshine couldn’t do—”

Sandro reached up and grabbed Zlatan’s face, and then kissed him. Hard. Long. With tongue from the first second, teeth from about the tenth, and then Zlatan wasn’t timing it because he was busy counting Sandro’s molars with his tongue, his good hand tangling in Sandro’s hair and Sandro grinding his body up Zlatan’s chest as they necked. In church. In front of the altar and Paolo.

When Sandro broke it off, he did so in order to…God, he actually knew how to smirk when he wasn’t drunk. And he was good at it, and it looked good on him, with the way it made him heavy-lidded and curved his already-bruising lips. He hung from Zlatan’s neck and looked like that, and Zlatan wished there was a way to slap him and kiss him senseless at the same time. “Zlatan, you’re an _idiot_ if you think we’re going to let you get away with being the _hero_ , of all things.”

“Anyway, somebody really needs to sit you down and tell you about the Mancini-Ancelotti war last year. Believe me, we’re familiar with difficult situations. It’ll take some effort, but we can get through your shifting loyalties,” Paolo said, standing up. He glanced off to the side, seeing something Zlatan couldn’t see, and then stepped forward to press his lips to the corner of Zlatan’s mouth, soft and lingering.

A hard pointed thing was squeezed into Zlatan’s hand and this time he took the key. Actually, he closed his fingers around it so tightly that Paolo had to squirm his hand free. The other man pecked Sandro on the cheek while rubbing Sandro’s shoulder, then walked off towards a somewhat embarrassed-looking Rino.

“Sandro, we’re going to need you in there too,” Paolo called back.

“I know, but…” Sandro slumped a little so he could look up into Zlatan’s face. He raised his brows, his smile slowly vanishing as Zlatan didn’t immediately say anything. “Zlatan. I know you’re not that kind of—”

Zlatan snorted and looked off to the side, letting his hand slide out of Sandro’s hair. “Oh, you know Zlatan?”

That just about killed the last of Sandro’s smile. He dropped a little further, staring up at Zlatan with almost the same expression he’d been wearing when Zlatan had put a knife to his neck, when Zlatan hadn’t taken up his drunken offer. Simple hurt.

Then the anger shuttered his face and he started to yank his hands down, but he was too slow and Zlatan jerked him back before he could storm off. At first Sandro resisted, his mouth stiff as iron, but Zlatan hooked his cast around the other man and slipped his hand under Sandro’s jaw, stroking his thumb along its edge, and suddenly Sandro gave. With a bite and then a long, soft groan as his hands came back up to knead at Zlatan’s upper arms.

“You bastard,” he said, when they had to part for air.

“And you like it,” Zlatan grinned. He kissed Sandro again, quick because he just wanted to make his point, and then let the other man go.

Sandro actually looked annoyed about that. And then disappointed when he remembered that he had _duties_ and they couldn’t keep necking in church, but he reluctantly started off after Paolo anyway. Then he paused and looked back at Zlatan. “Are you…”

“Look, I’m staying. I feel like shit anyway—I could sleep for a week after everything I had to do.” After a moment, Zlatan shrugged and walked up to the other man. “I’m going to go take a nap in Luís’ office, and you can come get me when you finish insulting each other’s mother’s recipe for tiramisu, all right? Then I’ve got a two-week vacation before I need to start looking at work again, so don’t pout. I’ll get around to you.”

“God, you’re annoying,” Sandro said. He took a step, then stopped to glare at Zlatan. Then he took another step, and then he smacked Zlatan hard on the shoulder and at the same time glided into full-on smoldering stalk. “You know what, Paolo can get you. He’s driving you home for dinner anyway.”

Zlatan’s bellow of laughter abruptly stuttered and died. He started to ask what the hell Sandro meant, but by then the other man had rounded the corner. So Zlatan was left standing there, with his mouth still open, and it was just a good thing Sandro had kept on walking and hadn’t seen because Zlatan still didn’t quite believe what had just happened and he might just have lost his temper right there.

Instead he eventually made his way to Luís’ office, where he found the other man pouring what was at least Luís’ second shot of whiskey. Luís got out another glass when he saw Zlatan, then pushed it across the desk before he flopped into his chair. “Thank all the saints. That went… _well_. Somehow everything worked out, and Zlatan, if you don’t see the hand of God in this miracle now, then you’re just too blind for me to keep trying.”

“Yeah.” After seating himself, Zlatan tossed back his shot. He swallowed a few times, feeling the burn of the whiskey, and then reached for the bottle to refill his glass. But something clinked and then he remembered he was still holding the key to Paolo’s house. 

He looked at it, then pulled out his keys and, after a lot of cursing and fumbling, managed to get that one onto the ring. Luís eventually lowered his head to see what was going on; he blinked, then narrowed his eyes and sat up and basically made it obvious he didn’t need an explanation.

“And I got another dinner invitation,” Zlatan said instead. He stuffed his keys back into his pocket, then sat back. “I…you know, I really thought they weren’t going to go for it. They’d think if I really cared, then I should’ve told them about my problem and Paolo would come up with some brilliant plan and that’d be that, and then I’d have to try and tell them why that’d be absolute bullshit.”

“Why…would it be bullshit? I’m sorry, but my mind’s stunned and not working too quickly right now,” Luís asked.

Zlatan rolled his eyes and flipped his hand to wave away the apology. “Because one, that’d be like Luciano thinking them asking for a partnership is the same as them saying he can be king. Then they’d never get why I’d always be mad at them and I’d end up hating them, because they’d just be like all the other idiots who think paying me is the same as owning me.”

“I’d give Paolo a little more credit for being able to learn about people, but I could see him being difficult in the beginning, if you started that way.” Luís pulled over the bottle and topped up his glass, but then let both of those sit on his desk.

“He’s _already_ been difficult. Even though he does apologize nicely, and I would’ve told you about that if you hadn’t gotten squeamish,” Zlatan muttered. He grinned at the face Luís made at him. “The other thing’s that frankly, nothing else would’ve worked. Any longer and Luciano just would’ve gone to war with them—this way he at least has to act like he’s their ally till he’s taken care of Dutch Schultz and Van Basten, and now Paolo and Lippi and whoever know to use that time to get in a better position. But anything else…none of them were going to hide just to make Paolo get that worried, and unless Sandro and Gigi were out of the picture, he wouldn’t have ever believed how much trouble he was in.”

After a few minutes of silence, Luís stirred enough to pick up his glass. He took a thoughtful sip from it, his eyes on the far wall. “So you liked them and wanted them to live, and you made sure they would while thinking they’d never forgive you for it. In fact, you did all you could to try and force them not just to act the way you wanted them to, but to see that forgiveness was out of the question.”

Zlatan frowned and opened his mouth. He looked at Luís, then at his glass, and then shut his mouth and looked off to the side.

“Because, if I understand this correctly, the whole point was to make them have this under-siege mentality, as you thought they weren’t taking Luciano seriously enough. So you made yourself into the villain and gave them some practice as well as warning.” Luís blinked a few times, then sagged forward over the desk and put his hands over his face. He rubbed them back into his hair, then dragged them down again as he sighed.

“You’re the one who told me to look at what really matters to me to figure out what to do,” Zlatan muttered. He could feel the explosion coming.

“Yes, and you did exactly that and in a highly commendable manner, but-- _Zlatan_. When I said that—oh, all right, I lied. Whenever I say something like you should go with what you think is best, what I really mean is that if you find people who’ll take you in and cook you pasta and always make sure you’ve got company in bed, you hold onto them! It’s commonsense!” Throwing up his hands, Luís fell back in his chair and exhaled in furious exasperation. He stared at the ceiling and muttered silently to himself for a few seconds. “You don’t depend on them to figure out that they can’t let you walk off. You got lucky this time, but Maldini has too many pots on the stove sometimes and Buffon cares too much about keeping up his haughty act and Sandro Nesta—Nesta loses his damn temper before he can really think. So you’ve got to do it. Bash their faces into it if you have to. Lock them in a room. Marry them.”

Zlatan stared. This wasn’t quite the explosion he’d been expecting. “I _am_ married. And they’re men.”

“Oh. Right. Well…then get their house keys.”

“I do have their keys. One, anyway.”

“Oh…I give up. I give up. You’re just one absurdly lucky bastard, Zlatan.” Luís rolled his eyes as he pushed himself forward. He picked up his glass, a smile finally beginning to sneak onto his face, and raised it in the air. “And I just hope you continue to be one.”

Zlatan smiled himself and sat up, then lifted his own glass. “Thanks—”

“—but if you ever neck again in my church? I’ll be forced to explain to you and whoever it is why luck has no place before the good Lord. Now, to your long life, happiness and an abundance of pasta.”

* * *

**Gratuitous Epilogue**

Marco stopped dead in his tracks. He blinked, then rubbed his eyes. Then he swore and began to charge forward, reaching into his coat, but before he could get out his gun, Alberto stepped in front of him.

A couple minutes later, they’d disentangled themselves and Alberto had stopped apologizing long enough for Marco to get a word in. “That was Zlatan Ibrahimović! Gila, he’s in the _house_ \--”

Alberto frowned and looked at Marco as if he were Inzaghi’s account-books and somebody had asked Alberto to interpret them. Then his face cleared. “Oh. _Oh_ \--oh, no, no, no, we’re not fighting him anymore. He’s been on our side for two months now, and actually, he’s the one who helped us make terms with Luciano and run Van Basten out of town.”

“What?” All right, Marco had gotten delayed ridiculously long in England and he knew he’d missed a hell of a lot, but…what? “What?”

“He’s a good guy, actually,” Alberto said, and inexplicably pinked in the cheeks. He scratched awkwardly at the back of his head. “Paolo has him over for dinner a couple days a week.”

Paolo…had him over. For dinner. There were hundreds of loyal friends and associates and lackeys who’d never gotten a dinner invitation to the Maldini home. _Marco_ had never gotten an invitation, though he and Paolo had once taken both their families out on a joint night to the state fair. “Holy Mary, Mother of God.”

“No, really, he’s—” Alberto looked at something behind Marco and ducked his head, suddenly all shy and demure “—Morning, Gigi. How was the night shift—”

“Miserable,” Buffon succinctly stated. He glanced at Marco and grunted as he shoved Marco aside—which wasn’t new; Buffon took in just about everything short of the Second Coming with a disdainful grunt—but as he walked on towards the kitchen, Alberto suddenly started to move with him.

Then Marco saw the arm Buffon had hooked around Alberto’s waist, and the way Alberto’s head was tipping towards the other man’s shoulder. Well…that had taken long enough, was all he had to say. And if that could happen, then maybe he could believe in Zlatan changing sides, and hell, for all he knew, the dinner invite was Paolo throwing Zlatan off the—

\--and Marco walked into the kitchen, and Ibrahimović was standing there in wrinkled trousers, his suspenders hanging about his hips, and a half-buttoned shirt that Mauro was trying to get around in a not terribly covert manner. Zlatan mostly ignored Mauro’s hands, though he occasionally bent over to nibble an ear, and kept reading the newspaper spread on the counter before him while arguing with Luca about something in it. He did look up when Buffon came towards him, that grin of his flashing as he asked how Buffon’s night had been. He got the same answer that Marco had gotten, but as Buffon tried to get past, Zlatan darted in to smack a kiss on Buffon’s cheek. And did not get his neck broken, but instead got an absent hair-ruffle as Buffon opened the ice-box.

Zlatan also somehow detached Alberto from Buffon’s side, and for a few seconds had Alberto’s ass in his hand and Alberto did not try to hit him or die of embarrassment. He did hiss a little, but didn’t really pull away till Buffon had gotten his bottle of milk and was tugging him back into the hall. Apparently not disappointed, Zlatan used his hand to turn the page; he hadn’t missed a beat in his now three-way discussion with Luca and Mauro.

And then there came the unmistakable combination of slamming doors and thudding feet that meant an angry Sandro Nesta. He stormed in, his hands waving around and his hair already a fuzzy snarl about his head, saying something about Paolo and timing and cognac. Everyone immediately identified it as the usual three-times-daily fit of temper and discreetly moved out of his way…except for Zlatan, who kept reading his paper, even when Sandro found he couldn’t open the icebox door as far as he wanted because Zlatan was in the way.

Sandro paused, chest heaving and eyes burning holes in the icebox. Then he reached back and shoved at Zlatan—except Zlatan had whipped his hand around and grabbed Sandro’s wrist first. Then Sandro started in on Zlatan, who rolled his eyes and somehow wrestled Sandro into the hall, and for several minutes there was a lot of banging and muffled thumps and swearing on Sandro’s part. Then the thuds got quieter, and the bursts of swearing came farther and farther apart, and finally they stopped altogether. Instead, a moan that was distinctly in Sandro’s voice drifted into the kitchen. Rino blushed and hid his face in the sporting section of the paper.

A few minutes later, Zlatan walked back in and returned to his newspaper. He saw Marco on his way, but didn’t have the time to comment before Sandro…Sandro still looked annoyed, but his stride was lazy and his mouth was a touch slackened from its usual tight-pressed line, and he went about getting his breakfast without any more of a fuss.

“Oh, Marco, you’re back,” he said. “When did you get in? Just now?”

Zlatan looked at Sandro, not bothering to hide his smugness. Then he picked up his mug of coffee and dipped it in Marco’s direction. “Materazzi, hey. Listen, I hope somebody told you I’m on your side now, because this early in the morning I really don’t feel like dealing out spankings.”

Sandro went _red_ and hastily left the room without getting an answer to his questions. Marco stared after him, thinking very quickly about a great number of things that he’d never, _ever_ had to consider or even imagine before. And then he shrugged—it _was_ early, and he’d had a long trip. “Gila got me in the hall. Sounds like a hell of a story how that happened, and is there any of that coffee left?”

“Yeah, help yourself,” Zlatan said. He pointed to the pot, then turned to watch as Marco went to it. “And Jesus, was it. It’d be a long night of drinking to get through it all.”

Marco shrugged as he poured himself a mug. “Well, maybe I’ll take you up on that offer.”

This time Zlatan was the one who looked a little embarrassed, and Marco—shit, no, Marco could guess why. He hadn’t quite meant that, but…on the other hand, he had a lot of catching up to do, so it probably wasn’t a _bad_ idea to leave that up in the air. He’d just wait and see.


	2. Post Mortem: Couple filler scenes and an embarrassing number of potshots at ballerinas.

**An Evening at the Ballet**

Paolo pretended to adjust his cuff-links, not quite looking at the stairs.

“It’s five after eight,” Zlatan snorted. He slouched lower in the chair he’d appropriated and dug the heels of his feet into the parquet floor. When Paolo favored him with a disapproving look, Zlatan rolled his eyes but eased up so he wouldn’t leave any black marks. Like that would really bother anybody besides the maid. “Look, just take a seat. Helena always announces there’s a small technical delay and doesn’t start the show for ten minutes because she knows somebody’s wife is pulling this.”

“Pulling what?” Paolo asked, delicately raising his brows. Then he couldn’t help himself and looked at the stairs; his shoulders began to droop in a sigh.

Zlatan didn’t bother answering this time. He just looked meaningfully at the table clock Paolo had been manfully avoiding for the past ten minutes. And then he looked at the ceiling as a muffled thump came from above. Adriana’s voice almost immediately floated down to them and they both started to rise, but Zlatan sat back down when he recognized the scolding tone in it. Paolo stayed on his feet till he heard the double chorus of disappointed groans his sons made, then went back to leaning against the banister.

“So listen, I usually go down to the dressing-rooms at intermission and then don’t come back. Don’t get all offended or anything—I respect what the girls do, but I’ve also seen these routines a thousand times.” In every single stage, from when Helena was chasing around the deranged choreographer at two in the morning screaming for him to finish to the standing ovation on opening night. Which unfortunately was when it all got boring, from Zlatan’s point of view. “I’ll show up in time to get Helena home.”

The kids were still pleading, though it sounded like Adriana was making some progress to getting them back to bed, and so Paolo still clearly had half his mind on them. But he spared enough concentration to tip a curious look at Zlatan. “Where do you go?”

“Well, I try to stay in the theater.” Zlatan shrugged. “But what I do depends on what else is going on.”

Paolo twisted himself so he was fully facing Zlatan. “Well, what else is going on?”

For a moment, Zlatan just looked at him. Then he blinked a few times, rubbing at his nose. “Hey, I had a hard enough time getting these tickets for you two. Don’t go wasting—”

“Adriana doesn’t expect me up there for the whole time either. She said she wouldn’t mind a chance for a private conversation with your wife.” A fleeting look of wariness crossed Paolo’s face, but then he shook himself and carefully adjusted the way his curls were lying along his forehead. Again. They looked a lot better when they weren’t so precisely placed. “I’m not really sure why, but she usually has a good reason when I ask later.”

“Ah, _later_ ,” Zlatan grinned. “I know how that goes.”

The look on Paolo’s face was struggling very hard to stay noncommittal and to not veer towards commiserating, since that would’ve been completely out-of-place with the impression that he never had a problem. “Then you should know the best response to take in that sort of situation.”

“Yeah.” Zlatan paused, glancing up the stairs, and then got up and began straightening his suit so he’d be presentable by the time Adriana made it downstairs. “You ever been backstage during a performance?”

“No,” Paolo said after a moment. Thoughtfully, with his eyes lingering on Zlatan before he looked up at his wife.

* * *

_The Next Day_

Sandro threw up his hands and simultaneously fell backward into the seat. He clearly had a lot of practice with that routine, since he did it without making the chair wobble even a little. “Paolo, my God. Do you remember what happened the last time?”

“It’s a good chance to get another alderman on our payroll, and it’s just one afternoon,” Paolo mildly replied. He continued on to the desk, then sat down and began perusing the stack of cables received during the night.

“One afternoon of _fly-fishing_.” Now Sandro’s hands came up over his face and he slid down in his chair so his head hit the back of it with a little thump. He hitched up a little in a wince before starting to rub at his eyes. “Paolo. You don’t _fish_. You—do you realize it’ll be wetlands? That there might be gutting? You don’t even have the clothes for this!”

Paolo frowned at the telegram in his hand, rereading it. Then he scooted his chair to the left a few feet so he could dig out one of the notebooks piled up in a box beside the desk. “Well, I had to get him to leave somehow.”

“And what the hell were you—and _you_ \--” Sandro finally remembered Zlatan and slung himself around to furiously glower “—doing down there anyway? In the middle of the show? Hundreds of people were on the other side of that curtain, and if something had gone wrong—”

“It was his idea,” Zlatan said. He waited, but Sandro was still glaring at him. So he pointed at Paolo, just in case the rage had boiled Sandro’s brain beyond the point of language skills again.

For some reason, this made Sandro slap his hands down on the chair-arms and just get on the point of lunging. But then Paolo cleared his throat and Sandro had to hastily swing back around, his feet getting a bit tangled up with each other along the way. He glanced down to see what was the matter, then made the most bizarre strangled noise as he yanked his legs apart. “What.”

Zlatan blinked, then pressed the heel of his hand against the side of his head. Thinking that Sandro sounded like a knife-grinder and that he looked like a walking fuck like that definitely were impressions that shouldn’t both be in Zlatan’s head at the same time. It made his head hurt in odd ways, and no matter how often that had been happening lately—well, it wasn’t something he really wanted to get used to. Even if Sandro was going to look like that every few minutes.

“You did say you weren’t interested, Sandro.” Paolo made notes in a neat, elegant script that Zlatan could read from where he was sitting on the bed. “If you want to go next time, just say so.” He lifted his pen, dipped it in the inkwell, and then carefully blotted the tip so it wouldn’t spot when he took up writing again. “It was a red velvet curtain, too. It would’ve looked wonderful with your hair and skin.”

Sandro had been leaning forward to rant on, but in the middle of that he choked and awkwardly sat back. He reached towards his throat while looking at the floor, then glanced up sharply at Paolo as his hand abruptly detoured to his shoulder. Then it moved to pull at the back of his neck as he mumbled to himself, trying to act like the color wasn’t rising in his face. He suddenly looked at Zlatan and caught the amused expression on Zlatan’s face, then huffed himself up to his feet and stalked into the bathroom.

Zlatan was a little less amused then, since tonight was all booked up with work and he had to do it with Sandro, and having to deal with a seething Sandro was like trying to kill a very fast gnat with a feather. “Paolo—”

“Five minutes and he’ll be back out, asking if we’re going again anyway and if he needs to come to make sure somebody remembers to be sensible,” Paolo calmly said. He stopped, putting the end of his pen to his lips. His brow furrowed as he reread one of the cables. Then he arched one brow and quickly dashed off a note to himself. “So, when is the next show we can get tickets to? I’ll need to make sure he takes the night off.”

And once upon a time, Zlatan had figured Paolo for the restrained one. Good thing Van Persie had gone to France after all, or else Zlatan would have had to take a day off himself and make sure that that stupid drunken bet never came back to haunt him. “Thursday?”

“Should be fine.” Paolo made another note.

The bathroom door banged open. Sandro stood there, a perfectly framed exemplar of quivering emotion, before he sighed and dropped back into his seat. His arm flopped so his hand knocked against a box on the side-table and he looked that way, then picked up the box. After flipping the lid back onto the table, he picked out a chocolate and began eating it with a desultory look on his face. “Damn it, Paolo. Then you’d better not complain the next time I—”

He paused, then glanced at Zlatan. Then Sandro dropped his head, but something white flashed just before he did. His shoulders shook a little, and then he got up and went out the door. A distinctly smug chuckle floated back after him, and for a moment Paolo looked very, very faintly disturbed.

And then he went back to work. Zlatan laid back on the bed and wondered if maybe he ought to have waited a bit longer and found out just what these two were like before he’d committed himself.

* * * * * * * * *

**The Ballerina Effect**

Gianluigi lowered himself onto the corner of the sofa, then stretched out his legs as far as they could go—which was well across the cramped little office. He blinked a bit when his left foot nearly took out Cannavaro, but otherwise didn’t react as Fabio stumbled hastily out of the way, lost his balance and promptly made a mess of the ledgers on the table that Inzaghi had just sorted. Inzaghi, still holding the last book, stared down at Fabio’s head as if he were contemplating how many pieces he could beat out of it.

“Why not?” Gianluigi asked.

Cannavaro cursed and finally clawed his way to his feet, his tie yanked askew and a long splotch of red ink on his fawn suit-sleeve. He turned around, looked irritably at the rest of them, and then groaned and made a face like a weepy girl when Inzaghi silently pointed to his stained arm.

“Because I like Alena.” Zlatan went back to cleaning out the disassembled rifle spread around him on the floor.

“So do I. That’s why I want to talk to her again.” On Cannavaro’s fifth dragging sigh, Buffon finally looked up at him. Gianluigi tipped his head to the side, then expressionlessly pointed to another splash of ink on Cannavaro’s chin.

Fabio immediately swiped at it without thinking and promptly stained his other sleeve. He looked at himself. Both Gianluigi and Inzaghi looked at him. Then Inzaghi just opened his fingers and dropped the book—which _barely_ missed Cannavaro’s toes—before turning sharply and walking away.

“Yeah, of course you want to talk to her again. I know what you want to talk about, you did so much the last time you saw her. So no. Alena’s a nice girl with a bright future—she’s already got two regular leads, and the last thing she needs is some moron with a bunch of roses messing it up for her,” Zlatan said. He put down the piece he was holding and picked up the next one, clucking over the bits of dried blood he could see on it now. He really hated having to use a gun to club somebody—that wasn’t what they were for, and he kept a good crowbar around just for that—but he’d been in a hurry. “You don’t know anything about ballet anyway.”

After a few seconds of disbelieving pouting, Fabio sighed, shrugged and wiped off his hands and face with a handkerchief. Then he stripped off his ruined suit-jacket and tossed it to the side before sitting down to start counting greenbacks.

“So you say without even bothering to find out. As a matter of fact, I have nothing but the highest respect for artisans like ballet dancers. They’re carrying on a rich Italian tradition of dedication to graceful power—no matter what those damn French have to say about who’s added more to the art,” Buffon sniffed. He briefly looked up as he swung his arms over the back of the couch, then half-closed his eyes as he arched and popped a few bones in his spine.

Fabio stopped flipping through wads of cash to look oddly at Buffon. And while Zlatan hadn’t been highly impressed with Cannavaro’s mind since meeting him, he did have to agree with the other man there—wait. “You’ve dated a ballerina before, haven’t you? Oh, Christ. You have a taste for them. Now I’m really not telling you what her number is.”

Buffon’s eyes opened and his head slowly turned so he could look at Zlatan. He stared for several long minutes, his expression solidly unimpressed.

And Zlatan stared right back, and finally Buffon rolled his eyes and swung forward, dropping the contempt for pure annoyance. “Goddamn it, Ibra. I was planning to bring Gila along—does that prove that I’m not going to offend your friend?”

“No. And it’s not just about her, you dumb camel. First of all, you’re making me feel like a pimp—can’t you just go wait by the dressing-room after a show like every other guy in town? And second—second, I don’t know if I really like either of you—doing that.” Zlatan made a face at the rifle piece he was scrubbing. “I mean, honestly. She’s like a sister to me, and if you and Gila…and then you come home and steal my fucking bed again…that’s almost incest, okay?”

Gianluigi blinked once. Slow, with the lower eyelids coming up farther than the upper ones like he’d almost looked heavenwards at the same time. “Zlatan, it’s not like you’ll actually be trading spit with her. I have mouthwash.”

Cannavaro choked. Zlatan felt an ache in several parts of his face as he grimaced again. “That’s definitely not persuading me. Look, my wife will kill me.”

“Oh, for God’s sake…that’s what men say when they don’t have the balls to stand behind their own convictions,” Buffon snorted.

“Shut the fuck up, okay? Helena can break down a body faster than I can, so why don’t you wait till you meet her and then be a jackass to her face? Then see what happens.” The last fleck of gore finally scraped off the metal, so Zlatan swapped the scrubbing brush for polishing cloth. “And besides, if you’re really serious about Alena, you’ll have to learn to respect the fact that your girl will have a say in things. So I’m actually saving you a lot of trouble here.”

Buffon did his best impression of a dead-man stare. Given what an unnatural combination his absolute stillness and height made, it was a pretty good likeness. “Zlatan, you’re being a moron. I can see what your marriage does for you and I can’t help it if you make it look good.”

“I—” Zlatan paused, frowning. Then he swore as he figured out that he couldn’t contradict that without insulting himself. And swore again when he noticed the smug look on Buffon’s face. “You know what? I’m going back to the townhouse right after this and changing the lock on my room. And then see if I let you in when you come in later, all annoyed because Gila’s too busy _working_ to take care of you. In fact, I think I’ll make sure I’m fucking Mauro against the other side of the door—”

“If you don’t give me her number, I’ll bang on the door every time Sandro drags you off,” Buffon suddenly said. He stared hard at Zlatan, completely serious. “And believe me, he will get frustrated much more quickly than you will, and it will not be pleasant. It will ruin your li—”

“All right, all right! Jesus.” Zlatan slouched against the wall and pulled up his knees so he could look at them instead of at the shit on the couch. He dropped his current piece and picked up the next so he could work the cleaning brush hard over it, pretending he was sandpapering a certain asshole’s face. “Not that he’s doing much of that anyway, but…look, I’ll ask her if she wants to meet you privately for a coffee. I can’t give you her number till Helena gets a chance to meet you. When you’re not drunk, and crawling all over me, and you have a _lot_ to work on there to get her on your side, you know.”

Gianluigi just grunted. At least he looked vaguely pleased. He sat there like the well-dressed creepy scarecrow he was, giving off that satisfied air, and Zlatan just thought that if Helena didn’t get back in town soon enough to cut down the bastard, he was going to do it. And to hell with Paolo’s ban on infighting while Mancini and Ancelotti both had to be in town. It wasn’t like it ever stayed fighting with this lot for long, anyway.

The door opened a few inches, paused, and then swung the rest of the way before Inzaghi, who came in with a cup of coffee and a slightly more resigned look on his face. He stalked past Fabio without looking at him, then sat down and began reorganizing the ledgerbooks. After a moment, Buffon got up and went out, muttering something about checking the front shop if it was going to be so slow.

Cannavaro managed to hold it in for about ten minutes after that, but then he just threw up his hands and looked at Zlatan. “Ballerinas?”

“Legs that not only can dance with a nutcracker, but _be_ one, too,” Zlatan grinned. “It’s the next new rage.”

* * * * * * * * *

**The Ballerina Effect, Part Two**

Zlatan had just been about to relax and sip at his Scotch on the rocks when he suddenly started up in his chair. His hand automatically went inside his coat and he looked quickly about the room, then realized where he was: Sandro’s room, deep inside Paolo’s townhouse, and so short of a full-scale siege, he should be safe. And anyway, he didn’t see anything out of place—the chocolate boxes didn’t count, even if he still couldn’t help looking funny at them—and Paolo was still trying to decide what suit and tie to wear, so there wasn’t any hurry with him. So…why had Zlatan not gotten to have his drink?

He was just getting annoyed at himself when the slamming of a door filtered up from below, letting him know it actually _wasn’t_ his fault and there was a good reason why he was so jumpy. Though that only made it worse, since now he knew for sure he wasn’t getting in a nap anytime soon. “This is why you should’ve put Gigi or Fabio on call, if you were going to let Gattuso handle things for a whole night. First we’ve got that state senator yelling his head off about his dented car, and now we’ve got—”

Paolo stepped back from the closet and turned to look at Zlatan, his mouth open and ready to deliver a calmly withering explanation with just the faintest hint of world-weary exasperation. He even raised his left hand so he could gesture vaguely.

The door banged open. Sandro stalked through before it’d even swung back from the wall, narrowly avoiding its clip at his shoulder as it whammed back into its frame. Then he kept on going, his jaw set and his hands in fists against his hips—and going, even though Paolo was directly in the way. Zlatan sighed, tossed back the Scotch and put the glass down, then started to get up.

It looked like Sandro was going to run over Paolo, but at the last moment, Sandro pulled up short of the other man’s arched brow. Well, his feet did, anyway—Paolo’s newly-polished shoes remained untouched, but Sandro’s hands suddenly came up and unfolded to grab at Paolo’s head, and Sandro’s head continued forward, and then Sandro was furiously kissing the other man.

Zlatan sat back down, blinking hard. Sandro’s right hand now was splayed over Paolo’s cheek, the thumb disappearing beneath the other man’s jaw, and even though Sandro’s other hand was out of sight, Zlatan could at least see the rippling snarls of hair that it was pushing away from Paolo’s head. The whole force of Sandro’s approach had rocked Paolo onto his heels to begin with, and now the hair-pulling was forcing his head further back so he didn’t have time to recover. His hands had snatched at Sandro, but while one had gotten hold of a shoulder and was squeezing it white-knuckled tight, the other had missed and now was floating uncertainly in the air.

The tips of Sandro’s fingers peeked out from the tangled brown curls at the nape of Paolo’s neck as Sandro moved relentlessly off Paolo’s mouth and along his jaw, down his throat. Paolo’s hand abruptly dropped to Sandro’s upper arm. “Sandro—”

Who now moved his other hand so Zlatan could see the fuzzy look in Paolo’s eye. That hand slid pointedly down Paolo’s bicep to the elbow, then pushed hard at that so it could straighten the whole arm against Paolo’s side. Judging from the way Paolo was still struggling for balance, Sandro hadn’t let up any with the pressure his mouth was exerting. He certainly wasn’t bothering to answer Paolo.

“Sandro. I have a meeting.” Paolo breathed slow and short. “In half an hour.”

“To hell with the meeting. I’m fed up,” Sandro mumbled, his head still moving against Paolo’s throat. His hands both went to Paolo’s shoulders and shoved down the other man’s suspenders while Paolo was trying to push at him, and then he swung forward a bit to fit himself against Paolo from knee to neck. “I am _so goddamn sick of—_ ”

And the elastic straps did snap down to get trapped in Paolo’s crooked elbows, and Paolo did indeed make a useless attempt to shrug them back up so Sandro could easily yank open his shirt. The tail closest to Zlatan flapped out from between the two men like a bobbing paper boat as buttons pinged away to scatter over the floor. Grunting, Sandro jerked his head up, grabbed the hair at the back of Paolo’s head, and then used that to drag them into another forceful, sloppy kiss as he began to tug at his tie.

Paolo groaned and started to sag, letting the suspenders slip free of his arms, but then he seemed to remember himself and grabbed at Sandro’s side. But he didn’t get in with his fingers enough, and so he only managed to get Sandro’s shirt. And then Sandro twisted sideways, his head going into the curve of Paolo’s neck again, and Paolo’s hand didn’t move so Sandro nicely had the other man pull his shirt free of his waistband. A few buttons snapped off that, too.

“Sandro, damn it,” Paolo finally said, breathless enough to betray a little annoyance. He raised his hands and put them against Sandro’s shoulders, and Sandro put his hands inside the loose halves of Paolo’s shirt. What he did with them was annoyingly out of Zlatan’s view, but Paolo abruptly snarled and gave Sandro a much harder shake than Zlatan would’ve given him credit for.

Sandro’s head immediately came up. He went back on his trailing foot, his hands still on Paolo, and stared at the other man. His mouth was red and his eyes weren’t angry now, but they were more than halfway blurred with heat and they didn’t seem quite capable of focusing on Paolo. He licked his lip and seemed to forget what he was doing halfway through that so his tongue lingered out against his bottom lip before he finally, lazily, curled it back into his mouth.

Paolo blinked once. Then his hand shot up into Sandro’s hair, twisting the wavy strands hard around its fingers, and his other hand knotted up a knob of Sandro’s shirt before using that to haul the other man to him. Though really, Sandro was all but lunging into it, and when their mouths met again, Zlatan was honestly surprised to not hear the crack of teeth breaking.

No, instead it was all wet pops and long, hissing breaths as they devoured each other, their mouths roving with ferocious intensity over each other. Paolo dragged up Sandro’s head and propped it that way with his hands beneath the man’s jaw, teasing Sandro’s lower lip till Sandro was writhing in place against him. And then Sandro bucked so hard that Paolo missed his target and instead kissed the side of Sandro’s jaw, and Sandro took the chance to slide his tongue into Paolo’s mouth at the corner and drag it across, following Paolo’s upper lip. Then he came back, and then he simply came straight forward, his head turning to the side as it looked like he was trying to force his whole mouth into Paolo’s.

Something dropped softly to the floor: Sandro’s tie. Then Paolo’s belt. And then, the shape of his hands pushing up against the shirt at Sandro’s back, Paolo somehow stepped out of his shoes and socks as he shoved them back to the bed in four stuttering steps. Sandro wrapped his arms around Paolo’s back barely in time, and then they were falling over, Sandro’s right leg already hooking round Paolo’s thigh. Somewhere along the line, Sandro had also lost his shoes and socks.

Their heads went down as the sheets billowed up around them, though a moment later Paolo’s arm came out and slapped down some of the blankets, its fingers strained back into tendon-popping claws. Paolo’s feet jerked off the floor, but then the left one came back down as he pushed off on it onto his toes, trying to drag them further onto the bed. His right leg twisted slightly to the side, then slowly lifted and as it did, Sandro’s foot slid along it up towards the knee, bunching the fabric of Paolo’s trousers away from his skin. Then Paolo put both feet down and stamped them a bit, getting all of his trousers around his ankles before he stepped out of them.

He went up on his knees on the bed, his head and back finally emerging from the flapping sheets as he held down Sandro’s wrists above Sandro’s head. Sandro was arched up into him, but fell back as Zlatan watched and Paolo chased him back down. And then kept going, his mouth gliding along Sandro’s throat as the other man cursed and twisted, his own trousers definitely loosened but nowhere near coming off—a fact which clearly, desperately bothered him.

Paolo stopped and sat back, gasping a little. His hair curled wildly into his eyes and his shirt was half-thrown up his back so Zlatan could see the way his skin shaded from pale to deep gold. “Sandro, I have a _meeting_ ,” he said, shaking his head. His voice had gone higher with laughter he didn’t bother trying to suppress. “In twenty minutes, now.”

And Sandro—Sandro made a low chuckling sound in his throat, his lips parted with his tongue a flickering tease behind them. He let his head loll back and stared up at Paolo through his long dark lashes. “Fuck the meeting. Fuck _me_.”

He dragged out the last word, bending up towards Paolo, and Paolo’s eyes hungrily followed the slow arc of Sandro’s body before they suddenly flashed. Then Paolo was down on Sandro again, Sandro’s hands all but scratching the shirt off his back, and Sandro’s legs were rubbing up against his sides, sometimes trying to heave them over and sometimes just trying to hold Paolo down. Paolo groaned, his eyes fluttering shut as he took Sandro’s mouth, and Sandro’s hands dropped to Paolo’s waist where they fisted up the man’s shirt till the lean muscle of Paolo’s belly was visible.

Then Sandro did roll them, never letting Paolo’s mouth release his own, his hands dragging Paolo’s shirt off. He threw that aside and it floated over the end of the bed, then reached back to yank off his own clothing. He got the shirt down to one sleeve, and then the trousers around one ankle, before Paolo flipped them over again—the violent twist sent Sandro’s trousers flying to nearly slap the far wall, but from the one arm of his that Zlatan could see, the shirt was still on. Not that Sandro was really trying hard on that, not with Paolo roughly nursing a nipple and dropping his hand down between their legs.

No, instead Sandro—got what he wanted now, was the expression on his face—laid there and slid along Paolo, laughing gaspingly at the ceiling till the gasps eventually overran the laughter, and then he just ground his head back into the mattress and squeezed his eyes shut. His hand slapped out towards Zlatan, then flopped loosely against the sheets, its fingers drifting to pull little circular hollows in those as Paolo kissed his neck and dropped the bottle of lotion on the floor beside the bed, as Paolo pulled himself up and positioned himself, as the rest of his body went rigid and shaking beneath the other man. Its fingers slowly curled, presenting their knuckles to Zlatan, before suddenly shooting straight out just as the space disappeared between his and Paolo’s bodies.

At that point it got too damn uncomfortable to sit, so Zlatan—somehow—forced his eyes away and got up out of the chair, taking his glass of half-melted ice with him. He did look back as soon as he could, since Paolo’s ass alone was a sight not to be missed, so he had to move very slowly since he couldn’t see what he was stepping on. Till he did step on the lotion and nearly skidded off the little puddle that’d formed around it so he had to catch himself on the side of the bed. Which shook it so Sandro said a couple things that would’ve curled even Luís’ ears to hear, but it sounded like Sandro meant it in a thankful way, so Zlatan didn’t worry too much about it.

He put down his glass for safe-keeping, then reached for the bottle. It was a little farther than he thought and since he was watching Paolo’s cock moving in and out of Sandro, he took a while to figure that out. But finally he got hold of it, and discovered that nearly all of the stuff had either been used by Paolo or had spilled out onto the carpet just as Paolo went into a hard shudder. “Goddamn it,” Zlatan said, jerking his head up.

He watched Paolo’s shaking slow, then stop as the other man slumped on top of Sandro. And looking at that, at the sweat collecting in the groove that marked out Paolo’s spine and the wet sheen on the other man’s thighs, at the long legs of Sandro carelessly twined around those, almost made Zlatan feel like it didn’t matter.

But then he looked at the bottle, and remember how fucking annoyed he was even though drunken Sandro suddenly made a whole lot more sense now. “Damn it.”

Paolo’s head made an effort to lift before the other man sagged back down again. “Hmm?”

Sandro’s feet twitched against the backs of Paolo’s knees, then slid down to either side of those. “God. God, that was good. That almost makes me…think I won’t mind…Zlatan’s idiotic…”

“Don’t even start with me. It wasn’t my idea for you and Gigi to take the same night off,” Zlatan muttered. He closed one eye and squinted into the bottle with the other. Then he flipped it upside-down and smacked the bottom with his hand a couple times. Something inside definitely moved and he gave it a good shake, then went back to hitting the bottom. “Or for us to all end up at the fucking ballet, and be too busy when Rino called about his car accident.”

The way Sandro’s toes jerked outwards just then was decidedly huffy. “Disclaiming the idea’s not the same as not being responsible for the outcome at all.”

“Why are you still arguing?” Paolo asked, voice muffled in some part of Sandro. “I thought it was good.”

Zlatan snorted, then couldn’t help himself and laughed outright at the wounded tone in Paolo’s voice. He nearly dropped the bottle, he laughed so hard, and then when he belatedly tightened his grip, he felt a clump of lotion finally fall out onto his fingers. Still grinning, he pivoted on his feet and set the bottle on the side-table. Then he retrieved his glass and turned to the bed just as Sandro tried to make an apology without actually having to say the words.

It almost worked, except Sandro flexed his muscles at the wrong time when Paolo was still inside the other man and apparently not yet recovered. Paolo hissed and Sandro pulled back to see what had happened, and Zlatan slid one slick finger up between Paolo’s buttocks.

The other man was still tensed up from Sandro’s over-enthusiasm, but his climax had left him loose enough so that Zlatan’s finger only ran into a little resistance before sliding all the way in to the knuckle. Then Paolo caught up with what was going on; his breath caught and he went perfectly still.

But Sandro moved, tossing his head around as he tried to see past Paolo’s shoulder. “What are you doing? Shouldn’t you give him a moment?”

Zlatan ignored that and swirled the ice around in his glass, watching the edges of the chips round off as they melted, and twisted in a second finger beside the first. Paolo let out a long, straining breath and pressed himself downwards, burying his head into the bed just above Sandro’s shoulder, which obviously frustrated Sandro’s attempts to get the other man off of him. His ass moved up into Zlatan’s hand and Zlatan pushed back at it, then crooked his fingers a little. Not much happened aside from Sandro trying to kick his leg, so Zlatan tried turning his fingers and then rubbing down with their tips, and _then_ Paolo’s knees abruptly slipped out from under him as he moaned. He hitched himself higher on the bed so he could spread his legs.

Sandro hissed, his feet jerking up and down and then up as he was pushed along with Paolo. He finally got one heel on the bed and immediately dug down into the mattress with it so that dipped and made Zlatan slide onto his foot. His toes flexed up to gouge Zlatan’s ass, and Zlatan promptly stabbed his fingers into Paolo so the other man shuddered. As he did, he put the glass to his mouth and tipped it so a couple ice chips slipped into his mouth.

“Stop doing that. He’s got a meeting,” Sandro said. He somehow managed to get up on one elbow, which made it clear that the reason Paolo wasn’t talking was that he was chewing on Sandro’s shoulder, and actually glared at Zlatan. “He’s _late_.”

“Because you wanted sex. You’re more like a wife than my wife or his wife is, you know?” Zlatan used his tongue to hold the ice chip against the side of his mouth as he leaned down, but a second before his lips touched the back of Paolo’s neck, he clicked the ice between his teeth.

Paolo gasped and jerked away from the ice, and thus neatly flattened Sandro just as the other man was gearing up for a serious assault on Zlatan’s patience. He dragged at the blankets, piling them up against Zlatan’s free arm as Zlatan traced the chip in an arc over Paolo’s nape and then down the back, wandering briefly over a shoulderblade. Then the ice was all melted, but Zlatan’s lips were still cold from it so he lifted his head and moved down about a foot, then kissed the dip at the base of Paolo’s spine. Moaning, Paolo fisted his hands in the sheets and arched so his ass pushed back onto Zlatan’s fingers. Then he dropped forward and down, and judging from the way Sandro’s spate of complaints took a sudden dive in volume, that’d done quite a bit for Sandro as well.

But not enough. Of course, since Sandro wouldn’t be himself if he wasn’t the pickiest little son of a bitch Zlatan had ever met. “Watch where you’ve got that glass. If you break it and get the pieces all over the—”

For once, Paolo was the one tossing his head in exasperation. His damp curls flicked off drops of sweat as he leaned back up and kissed Sandro back into the bed. As their heads sank down, Paolo’s hips rose again and this time, Zlatan took advantage of that to pull the other man completely free and turn him over. Which was awkward, and at one point got Paolo’s knee in Zlatan’s chest and toes dangerously close to Zlatan’s balls, but eventually Paolo was on his back with Zlatan’s fingers still inside him. And Sandro was panting hard but looking resentful, and to that Zlatan just grinned and tossed back the rest of the glass’ contents.

He dropped the empty glass on Sandro’s belly, then crawled over Paolo and acted as if he were going for the other man’s mouth before abruptly detouring to put a mouthful of ice against Paolo’s throat. Paolo’s hands came up to knead at Zlatan’s shoulders and he pushed his head back into the bed, forcing more of his throat up against Zlatan’s lips. So Zlatan promptly moved further down, and Paolo was just beginning to hiss in frustration when Zlatan applied warm lips and icy tongue to his left nipple.

Paolo shook all over, his fingers pressing to bruise into Zlatan’s shoulders, and did his damnedest to bend his knees back to touch the bed as he rode Zlatan’s fingers. “Fuck,” he muttered, his voice thick and harsh.

Zlatan had to stop for a moment and concentrate so he didn’t get distracted and lose control of himself right then. It was just—Paolo didn’t curse. It wasn’t nice or dignified and it had nothing to do with composure, and yeah, all of that made Zlatan itch to see what a little scratching and prodding would do, but he never really…figured on getting anywhere with that. Much less getting to Paolo writhing beneath him, eyes hotly impatient and mouth that loose and uninhibited when it wasn’t even _on_ anybody.

And Sandro needed a moment too. He just laid there, rolled over onto his elbow, and stared down at Paolo with this look on his face, like he’d seen a blue moon and would never be satisfied with regular moons from then on. He blinked and the look was still there, and Paolo wrenched his head around to gaze at him, mouth parted so that swollen lower lip was a damning invitation, and Sandro just kept looking like that. Sucked in his breath. “Good?” he asked, lips barely moving, voice barely there.

“Very,” Paolo said, letting the word ease off his tongue. He half-closed his eyes as Zlatan pushed the ball of his thumb up against Paolo’s ass, teasing it over the flesh stretching to accommodate his fingers. “But honestly, it’d be better if I wasn’t listening to you two argue the entire time.”

Sandro blinked again, then shook his head. Then he snorted and dropped his head onto the bed. That expression of haughty dissatisfaction came back a little softer than usual. “Well, somebody has to worry. Especially since no one else seems to remember he’s got no problem with pulling strings just to get what he wants.”

“At least I remember I’m in the damn room,” Zlatan snapped. He paused, head over Paolo’s chest with ice-water dripping from his lips onto the other man. And then he sat up.

He wasn’t actually sure if he was getting off the bed, or if he was just going to ignore Sandro and at least get something out of Paolo, but at any rate he didn’t have time to find out. Sandro hit him from the side, and then when he went down, his fingers slipped out of Paolo and the other man quickly twisted away. And just as quickly had Zlatan’s trousers open and had himself seated on Zlatan’s cock, on top of Zlatan, and—when Zlatan had relaxed enough to breathe so his eyes weren’t forced out of their sockets, he had to admit that that was a damn effective way to keep the conversation going.

“Son of a bitch,” he hissed.

“If you’re going to live here, you will respect my mother,” Paolo said, looking lofty. But luckily for him, he immediately switched to apologetic and leaned down, his hands settling on either side of Zlatan’s head. “But never mind that—look, that was hypocritical of me just now. Sandro and I have been arguing for years…I tend to forget we do, it’s gotten so…”

“You’re going to lose him if you talk about it that way,” Sandro said. And then he needed a moment to realize why Paolo and Zlatan would stare at him like that. When he finally got it, he folded up his lower lip for a second, then ducked his head as he slid across the bed. “Oh, for God’s sake, I don’t forgive anyone right away. Just ask Paolo. But—I’ll get around to it. If you’re not too idiotic before then.”

Zlatan rolled his eyes, then stiffened and bit down on his tongue as Paolo flexed himself around Zlatan’s prick. “I’m so convinced. Especially since you two are actually completely crazy and I’ve only just realized. Just how many suits does Paolo lose a year because you can’t _ask_ for ten minutes like a normal person?”

“Ten minutes?” Sandro repeated, brows arched to his hairline. He spared Paolo an irritated glance as the other man hastily hid his smile by nuzzling Zlatan’s neck. Then he snorted and tossed his head as he drew himself up on his elbows, which clearly was meant to emphasize the unusual height difference. “Besides, it’s not like he can’t afford it.”

Paolo stopped nuzzling. Then he put an arm across Zlatan’s chest and rested on it as he frowned at Sandro. “That’s a little—”

“And this, this whole back-and-forth thing you’re always doing. _Always_. When you’re eating, when you’re walking down the street, when you’re fucking—when people are shooting at you! It’s ridiculous.” Zlatan at first attempted to raise his hands to gesture, but something was on top of them. Well, not completely on top of one, but then somebody shifted to make it completely. And then Sandro and Paolo turned at the same time to look down at Zlatan, and even though their expressions weren’t anywhere near identical, it still made Zlatan twitch. “That. You just did it.”

“I wouldn’t say it’s ridiculous. It can be very helpful, actually,” Paolo said musingly. He pulled his arm off Zlatan to the bed, then adjusted his weight so he could move his hips in a highly distracting way. “Even very enjoyable.”

Sandro looked at Paolo with a slightly disbelieving expression on his face, then rolled one shoulder and bent down so his tangled hair fell in a veil around Zlatan’s head. “God, every time he gets that smug I want to shove him down on whatever’s nearest,” he said, and then he shoved his tongue in Zlatan’s mouth.

Well, Zlatan did agree, but he couldn’t really say so when—Sandro—was doing— _that_. And then Paolo was laying himself down against Zlatan, his mouth gliding over the side of Zlatan’s throat as his ass rose and fell on Zlatan’s prick, and Sandro moved up a little to accommodate him so Zlatan’s right hand suddenly came free. It immediately went to Sandro’s head and twisted itself in the other man’s hair, dragging Sandro back down. And Sandro didn’t resist, but instead bent himself so it would work, curving around Zlatan’s side as Paolo draped himself over the other.

The two of them _still_ were doing that, their mouths and hands moving not in perfect imitation of each other, but in complementary harmony, Paolo pressing down when Sandro let up, and that was so much more frightening and encompassing and—and too _good_. It shouldn’t really have been possible, but it was, and for some reason Zlatan was getting to see something of it—some kind of shadow of how it must have looked to Paolo and Sandro. And even that was irresistible.

No saint, Zlatan always told himself, but turning himself into this had nothing to do with temptation or godliness or any of that. It just was…if he left, then there’d be a space in between and maybe it’d only be for a moment, with the way they were—he wasn’t a complete egotist—but still, something like this shouldn’t have gaps. Not even for a moment. So he didn’t leave.

* * *

“Reschedule it!” Paolo called to the door. He grunted and dug his hands into the mattress, then heaved another inch of himself out from under Sandro. Then he stopped and sighed, looking pointedly at the top of Sandro’s head.

The rest of it was firmly slotted into the crook of Zlatan’s shoulder, and refused to move with equal stubbornness even though Sandro was awake. Zlatan briefly considered pushing at him, but then figured that the fact that he was grudgingly lifting his legs and arm out of Paolo’s way was enough effort from him.

Inzaghi left a little pause where anyone else would’ve cursed or sighed. “I already did and it’s on for Saturday. You had a sudden family emergency and had to go home—something about Daniel’s school. But Sandro had that—”

“Fuck,” Sandro mumbled. He twitched a shoulder. “Well, didn’t want to talk to him anyway.”

“And Zlatan got a call from his wife—”

Zlatan reflexively swore, then frowned at the ceiling. After a quick review of his memory, he decided he was sure he hadn’t been expecting any call from Helena. “Did she leave a message?”

“You’re taking her to lunch at the Ritz Thursday.”

“I am?” He didn’t remember any lunch date…which actually was an explanation in and of itself. “Oh, okay. I guess I am now.”

Inzaghi paused again. Then he apparently ran out of things to say, since the next thing Zlatan heard was soft footsteps padding down the hall. Usually Inzaghi was quieter than that, but God knew how long he’d been standing there, so maybe he was in a hurry. Or something.

Sandro finally lifted his head and looked at Paolo, who’d just freed his left knee of Sandro’s dead weight. “Wait, I think I dropped that glass on the floor. Check if it broke first before you get off.”

Paolo looked at him.

A faint tinge of red crept into Sandro’s face just before he dropped it back on Zlatan’s shoulder. “Oops.”

Sighing, Paolo repositioned himself and doggedly began wriggling his right leg out from under Sandro. “Lunch Thursday? Then…were you planning to leave right afterward?”

He slid his gaze away from Zlatan right before he said that last part, and a second later Sandro went all stiff and heavy against Zlatan, like he’d turned into a lead blanket. Then he slowly lifted his head; his hair was in his eyes, but he didn’t bother shaking it out of the way, and it didn’t do much to hide his discontent. “Portugal? What the hell is so important there that you’ve got to leave right before we go after Dutch Schultz?”

“A job,” Zlatan said. He watched Sandro’s expression turn even more unhappy. “Look, I’m going and that’s it. I have a contract.”

Sandro made a low snarling sound and dropped his head so fast he nearly slammed it into Zlatan’s chest. His legs and arms pushed down so he basically caged Zlatan in against the bed. He mumbled something.

Zlatan raised his hand, then looked at it. Then past it, and so he caught Paolo staring at him with a face that wasn’t any more pleased. Or understanding, and that all by itself made Zlatan flop back onto the bed. “I _can’t_ work for you, you idiots. People I work for end up dead or in some hellhole prison or stark raving crazy—that’s how I work. I already explained this a hundred times.”

“ _Portugal_ ,” Sandro muttered again. He turned his head to glare off to the side, his hair tickling the side of Zlatan’s neck. “And with the way you work…”

“Oh, don’t start that. Half of what happened here’s your fault—it’s not like most people have this habit of—” Zlatan paused. Then he pushed himself up on his elbows, which forced Sandro to look at him again. “Jesus. Is this why you keep pushing Paolo into closets but every time you see me, you storm off and get worked up till you _have_ to drag Paolo off? Look, you’re all strange. Every other time it’s been much, much easier to convince them to turn around so I could shoot them than to get them into bed.”

Paolo coughed and looked down. He absently picked at the sheets, then raised his head again. “Just what are you saying about us?”

“Really, what are you saying?” Sandro leaned back and narrowed his eyes.

“You’re never satisfied, are you?” After a moment, Zlatan rolled his eyes and laid back down. “Well, I could bring up a couple things about apples, but that’s got nothing to do with Portugal anyway. It…it’s not like I want to go, all right? But I’ve got contracts lined up for the rest of the year and you think it got messy here—you should see what happens when I _don’t_ finish one of those.”

“You don’t want to go?” Sandro asked. His mouth twitched a bit when Zlatan looked at him, trying to firm up so he didn’t spoil that serious face of his. “Not looking forward to the sun and spicy food, with winter coming up here?”

Zlatan snorted and flicked his finger into Sandro’s side, then grinned as the other man jerked away and so fell all over Paolo again. “I’ve been to Portugal before. It’s overrated. I like pasta better. And believe me, I can’t wait to get back and see what you look like when somebody pastes you in the head with a snowball.”

Sandro sucked in a breath, then hit Zlatan hard on the shoulder. Then he started with the insults, but was interrupted by Paolo clearing his throat. “Wait— _who_ gets hit with the snowball?”

“You’ll find out in a couple months,” Zlatan said, grinning. And he kept grinning, even when Sandro elbowed him hard and Paolo made a completely undignified snort.

* * * * * * * * *

**Beyond Ballerinas**

“He was taking the next ship, so he should be back in a couple days,” Henrik said, sipping his brandy. He put his glass down on the arm of the chair for a moment as he stretched his back, then slumped down with a long sigh. “If not sooner. I don’t ever think I’ve seen him so impatient before, even with all the nonsense that happened right before his and Helena’s wedding.”

Luís nodded and looked at some point just beyond Henrik’s left shoulder. His eyes were distant but the broad, deeply satisfied smile on his face was very much in the here and now. In fact, it was so present that it almost constituted a completely independent entity, as if the cat from Alice in Wonderland had switched its head for Luís’.

“Is Helena still in town?” Henrik waited till he’d counted to fifteen before he discreetly kicked Luís’ desk.

The other man started and his smile finally began to fade. “What? Oh—well, she will be. She’s down in D. C. right now, but should be back in time to greet Zlatan.”

“Ah, all right.” Though to be honest, that didn’t quite solve the puzzle of Zlatan’s new behavior for Henrik. He’d seen both Zlatan and Helena operating separately of each other before, and while Zlatan had clearly missed her before, the way he’d been acting in Lisbon was much more…extreme. “I don’t suppose she’s pregnant?”

Luís raised his eyebrows. “No, I don’t believe so…why, did he say—”

“Oh, no. But he did go through considerable trouble to smuggle back a lot of specialty foods—prosciutto, dark chocolate, that sort of thing—and I was wondering if maybe that was for her…her…” Henrik let himself trail off as he watched that grin spread over Luís’ face again. “All right, what did I miss? Luís? _Luís_. If you keep smiling like that, you’ll frighten the children.”

“Hmm? Oh, sorry. Is this better?” And Luís immediately rearranged his expression into a rough approximation of his usual weary, faintly sad determination. Except his eyes were sparkling and the corners of his mouth kept twitching, and all in all it was clear he was going to break a few bones trying to keep it up for much longer.

“No. Now you look like your face is about to jump off your body,” Henrik dryly observed. “Luís. What’d you do to him?”

After a bit of struggling, the grin reappeared on Luís’ face. He let out a long breath and stretched out his hands before him, then sat himself comfortably back in the chair. “I let Zlatan set himself up with a group of Italians. He keeps them too busy to argue with each other, and they keep him too busy to get bored and depressed so he does something stupid. I do hate to compliment myself too much before I thank God…but honestly, I think it’s an absolutely brilliant arrangement. After all, he was supposed to kill them all, but now everyone’s alive and at peace and in committed relationships, which is how I’m going to justify obeying the spirit of the doctrine and not the letter.”

“Italians?” The last time Henrik had been in Italy with Zlatan, he’d gotten the strong impression that the other man found Italians over-excitable and pushy. But then, this was America so maybe things weren’t exactly the same. He’d have to go see. “Huh.”

“I _know_ ,” Luís said. He kept grinning. “So brilliant.”

Henrik looked at him, then suppressed a sigh and rubbed at his nose. “Well…so I don’t suppose you’re ready for a new hopeless case yet? Or are you? Because I actually met this very interesting Frenchman—he’s a priest too, but he’s having a crisis of faith and I think he might find talking with you very helpful. His name’s Zinedine Zidane and he’s very nice except when he loses his temper…”


	3. Post-Story Extra: The Age of Excess

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sandro’s chocolate passion. Let us never speak of it again after this.

“Six stitches over his eye, the broken leg and then the two broken fingers,” Sandro called from the bedroom. The bed creaked as he bounced on it, then let out a long groan that undercut a series of crackling noises. “It’s wonderful, isn’t it? Schultz got away from yet another hitman, and now he’s mad as hell and what happens? We lose Rino for a month!”

A month? Unless Zlatan’s eyesight had suffered during the voyage back from Portugal, Gattuso had been clomping around downstairs with a shotgun strapped to one crutch. Which seemed to suggest he wasn’t _completely_ out of commission—frankly, he’d have to be in a coma for that to happen—but then, Sandro always loved his exaggerations. “You know, I didn’t miss your whining.”

“I’m not whining! I’m telling you what happened while you were mucking about in Porto! You asked me, so I’m telling you.” The crackling briefly ceased, then started up again. Then Sandro tossed something light into the trashcan so it rang out in a soft high note. “ _I_ can’t help it if we had a horrible time. Capone meant Billy had to go out to Chicago the day he got back, and take Luca and Gigi with him, so we’ve been shorthanded for a month and a half now. And Luciano—”

Zlatan pinched his nose and squeezed his eyes shut, concentrating hard on tuning out the other man. All right, he had asked, but he’d already gotten most of the news from Paolo on the drive back from the docks, and mostly he’d just wanted to be polite. Of course now he remembered why he generally didn’t bother with that. “Hey, Sacchi’s not in town, is he?”

Sandro’s train of complaints temporarily derailed into a short cough and then, oddly, a choke. But after a moment nothing sounded like a body hitting the floor, so Zlatan shrugged and turned on the water. He ran his hands under it, then pulled off his tie and bent over to scrub at his neck and face and ears; even traveling first-class, sea voyages always left him feeling salted over.

“No, don’t think so,” Sandro finally said, voice a bit muffled. Pause. “Why? Oo worried ‘bout somethin’?”

Water in the ears, Zlatan thought, and jammed a finger into each of them to clear that out. He straightened up and ran a hand through his wet hair, then grimaced at the way it flopped limply about. Then he shrugged again and just slicked it out of his eyes. “Yeah. He always invites me out to dinner whenever he’s in town, and usually I end up defending the honor of some stuck-up old raisin of a priest. It’s annoying.”

“Mmph funny mph.” Then something happened and Sandro’s voice drastically cleared up. “You probably wouldn’t mind if they were nuns. Or at least around your age.”

“Go to hell, Sandro. When I got here there weren’t any openings left for whores,” Zlatan snorted. He rooted around till he found a shaving kit—Paolo’s, from the Milanese crest on the ivory inlay—and gave the blade and brush a good washing before he lathered up. “Besides, I don’t know where you got this idea that I’ll do things for a good fuck, because the nonsense I’ve got to put up with is enough trouble without adding annoying things like people getting mad because I can’t remember their names in the morning.”

A mumbling grunt came from the bedroom, followed by some creaking. Then Sandro pulled up his legs so Zlatan could look through the door to see his socked feet dangling over the edge of the mattress. “You ever do that—” chewing sound “—ta mah an’—” mumble “—shredded over my pizza, like mozzarella.”

He was eating something, Zlatan vaguely realized, and didn’t think more on it because he’d gotten to the tricky bit around his chin and he still had a couple cuts there from having to shave on the damn rocking boat. “Relax, Sandro. I can always tell it’s you from the way you jam a knee or an elbow into me when you climb in. The real hard one is telling Gila from Paolo.”

Sandro sputtered, then coughed loudly. He cursed at something and probably hit it as well, since the sound of crumpling cardboard filtered into the bathroom. “Like hell it is. Just what kind of idiot are you, if you can’t—”

“See, I knew you’d get more upset if I brought up Paolo instead of you,” Zlatan said. He grinned while he washed the hairy foam off the razor-blade. Then he stared at the mirror, frowning. After a moment, he moved some foam so he could get that bit above his right ear.

“Of…course I would. You have no…taste for…somebody…who can rattle…off the basic…positions in ballet,” Sandro muttered, with much munching in between. Actually, he’d also occasionally make a sound that was almost humming, so it took him about a minute to get through that one sentence. “God knows…what those…Portugal…did for…”

Zlatan rinsed off the razor and wiped it dry before putting the shaving kit away. Then he bent over and splashed his face till he couldn’t feel that thin extra skin of soap on himself. “ _I did not fuck anyone in Portugal_. Okay? Why the hell do you think Paolo was limping when he got out of the car?”

Long pause. “He was limping this morning.” Very long pause. “Something about Adriana being very happy with her anniversary gift. Which I helped pick out, so I’m not sure I want to see her too soon.”

“Adriana?” But she—she completely didn’t _look_ like—Zlatan dragged his hand over his face, pulling off the excess water, and really thought about it for a moment. Then he slapped his cheek hard so it had a good reason to feel that warm. “Huh. Actually, come to think about it, I was wondering why he had his coat-collar buttoned all the way up. Didn’t think it was that cold today.”

“Portugal’s still a lot warmer this time of year,” Sandro muttered petulantly.

Zlatan looked at the towel hanging to his left, then threw up his hands and whirled away from it. He stalked towards the door, and when he reached it, smacked it away from him. “For God’s sake, I didn’t fuck anyone! Everyone was annoying and they screamed and fell over whenever you just _tapped_ them on the shoulder, and they were all _short_ \--”

He stopped. After a few seconds, he realized his hands were still up and he lowered his arms, but he didn’t stop staring. Though his staring itself did move, from the dented gilt lid on the floor with its wrinkled floppy bow to the sheets of tissue paper scattered over the side of the bed, and then up to the box itself with its little empty pockets. Then to Sandro, lying on his side behind the box with one last chocolate truffle pinched between his smeared fingers and raised eyebrows, like Zlatan had intruded on something private.

“That was two pounds of good chocolate,” Zlatan finally said. He looked around, then scuffled forward to kick at the lid, which was the size of a steering wheel.

Sandro put his head down on the bed and bit away half the truffle. His lips were brownish and despite his annoyance, there was an odd slackness to his body. “’s good, all right. Italian?”

“That was supposed to be for Helena.” Zlatan tipped up the lid with his toes, then grabbed it. Then he took the bottom from the bed and looked at it, just to make sure he hadn’t been seeing things and Sandro really had eaten every. Single. One. “Jesus.”

“Sorry. I’ll buy her another one,” Sandro mumbled. He tipped over a little so he could look up at Zlatan, his eyes big and wide and ridiculously innocent in his best Gilardino impression. Even if Zlatan would’ve bought that, he would’ve known better from the smug way Sandro very, very slowly pushed the rest of the last truffle into his mouth, sucking in his finger and thumb as well. Then he pulled them back out, but his lips didn’t manage to scrape off any of the chocolate stains on them. “This is really good. Did you bring any for me?”

The box folded easily in Zlatan’s hands, the stiff cardboard making pointy creases against his palms. He looked down at the crumpled ball he’d made, then back up at Sandro, who blinked once before continuing to gaze on with that expression of sluggish protest in the face of overwhelming proof to the contrary. “I can’t believe you.”

“What? You just threw it at me.” Sandro shrugged. He was in his shirtsleeves and when he lifted his chin in half-challenge, Zlatan noticed that a few brown dots had made it onto the wings of his collar.

Zlatan opened his hands and let the box drop. Sandro’s eyes followed it down—his head actually moved with them, as if he were tipsy—and then he rolled back to stare at Zlatan again. His hand absently rose to stop just short of his lip; he glanced down at it, seemed to see the chocolate on his fingers, and then leaned forward to lick at those.

Except Zlatan grabbed his wrist and started to yank the man towards the floor. He only got Sandro forward a few inches before the other man threw his weight back, jerking Zlatan off one foot. It would’ve been okay, Zlatan would’ve just gone with it and then taken Sandro off on the backswing, except when Zlatan’s foot went down it went down on one of those wrapping-sheets. The damn thing slipped out from under him and he went forward. He briefly glimpsed Sandro’s eyes widening before he fell over the other man.

But never let it be said that Zlatan couldn’t adapt to anything: he immediately changed his target and angled himself to pin down Sandro’s legs, because the other man had a vicious kick. He did have to let go of Sandro’s wrist, but he made the sacrifice worth it by getting hold of Sandro by the—another damn sheet of tissue-paper suddenly skidded his knee across the bed, tipping him nearly into Sandro’s bony shoulder. Zlatan planted one hand in the mattress for balance, but his other one slipped from Sandro’s waist and into Sandro’s belly, and then it sort of pushed back and forth as he scrambled for balance. It was a lot harder than it should’ve been since Sandro kept trying to drive his elbows into Zlatan’s head so Zlatan had to keep that tucked down; he couldn’t see a damn thing besides Sandro’s shirt-tails whapping about, and maybe the occasional flicker of rippling belly.

Finally he dropped onto his elbow and got stabilized that way, and then he was going to shove Sandro away, except—Sandro was making odd strangled snuffling sounds and slapping rather weakly at Zlatan’s head and shoulders. One pass of his hand pushed Zlatan’s head around, not really hurting too much, but in the wake of its fingers were sticky trails and—Zlatan breathed in hard, smelling nothing but that damn chocolate. He huffed out his exhale and accidentally slid his hand across Sandro’s stomach again, and this time Sandro let out a distinct giggle. _Giggle_.

Zlatan needed a second to absorb that. Then he figured one attack was as good as another and dove in with both hands, teasing his fingers over Sandro’s belly and high up the ribs, forcing his fingers in when Sandro tried to shove his arms down to his sides. “My God, you fucking—glutton! Gluttony! It’s a Deadly Sin, you Catholic prig, and—you ate all of them! I can’t believe you!”

“St—sto—sss!” Sandro vainly tried to thrash away from Zlatan, but instead lost his leverage somewhere and just ended up pointlessly kicking at the bed, at Zlatan’s shins, at the air. His hands did a little better: one got around Zlatan’s left wrist and bent it back, and the other one palmed at Zlatan’s face, getting its fingers up Zlatan’s nose and into his mouth. Not to mention getting that fucking chocolate all over him. “Son of a bitch!”

“My mother was not—” Zlatan snorted, shaking his head free. He took a moment to duck and Sandro somehow twisted free, then made a lunge for the end of the bed.

He was too slow and Zlatan hauled him back without any problem, but pinning him down on the bed was harder, Sandro’s fighting keeping Zlatan so busy that he couldn’t get his fingers back to any ticklish spots. Finally Zlatan just let himself drop on top of the other man, making his weight do all the work. That way Sandro couldn’t really do more than wriggle, but of course he wasted the effort for several minutes before his head went back. He gasped, eyes angrily flashing.

Zlatan rolled his eyes. “I went to _Portugal_ for that and you—”

Sandro’s eyes suddenly narrowed, directing their gaze to a point on Zlatan’s cheek. He appeared to consider it for one second before he suddenly lifted his head and—and _licked_ at the smears on Zlatan’s face. Licked at them, and went ‘mmm _mmm_ ,’ and then licked at them again.

For a moment Zlatan honestly gaped. Then he pulled himself together, and also started to pull off the other man. “You’re crazy.”

To which Sandro’s reply was to jerk his arm free, then grab Zlatan by the back of the head and force him back down. At the same time Sandro raised his head and dragged the flat of his tongue from Zlatan’s jawline nearly to his hair, twisting away from that at the last possible moment. Then he pulled himself further up, resting on one elbow, and craned his head around so he could nibble at Zlatan’s cheekbone. A funny little moaning sound escaped him.

After a long, long moment’s thought, Zlatan braced himself on one arm and patted down Sandro’s side till he found the hem of the other man’s shirt. He slipped his fingers up beneath the cotton and pulled up the undershirt beneath it, then touched bare skin just as Sandro used his mouth to flatten Zlatan’s earlobe back against his head. Mumbling and groaning, Sandro wrapped his arm over Zlatan’s back and pressed his hips up into Zlatan’s stomach. Zlatan rubbed his palm in long strokes along Sandro’s side, like he’d do to a cat, and Sandro arched and sucked at Zlatan’s ear and made soft chuckling noises in his throat, his eyes half-closed.

Well—getting there had been bizarre, but Zlatan couldn’t say he didn’t like looking at the result. He moved up a little so Sandro could get at the chocolate streaked over his throat, flicking open the buttons of Sandro’s shirt and then snapping a couple stubborn ones. Sandro grunted and worked himself around to curl over Zlatan’s left shoulder, trying to get at all the sticky smudges, and Zlatan took the chance to pull off their belts. Then he slung an arm around Sandro’s waist and hauled him over to the other side of the bed, where Zlatan’s luggage was—only Sandro couldn’t manage to keep his mouth on Zlatan’s face for the whole time, so he got frustrated and bit, like usual.

“Goddamn it, I just shaved,” Zlatan grumbled. He jerked his head away, but that didn’t do much since Sandro just dropped to massage Zlatan’s neck with his mouth and—and that felt good, but that didn’t mean Zlatan’s cheek wasn’t still stinging.

Sandro hummed, turning his head sideways so he could rub his cheek against the wet tingling places he’d just sucked. Those damned little noises kept coming from his throat, reminding Zlatan of the purring of a stray cat the girls had adopted for awhile. Come to think of it, that stupid cat had acted the same way, haughtily hopping onto the dinner table to take food right off the plate before scratching viciously for anything less than a full belly-rub. “Turn around. There’s more on your other side,” Sandro mumbled.

“No.” Zlatan shoved the other man down, then crawled over him to fumble about in the bags on the floor. Something bumped at the underside of his jaw, then latched on so Zlatan reflexively lifted his chin. Then he swore and nearly let a gun fall out of his bag as Sandro did something ridiculously pleasant to a tender scrape. “ _Jesus_.”

“Mmmmm…” Sandro began pulling at Zlatan’s shirt and trousers, lazy and distracted, but somehow he still managed to get Zlatan’s pants around his knees by the time Zlatan finally dragged himself back onto the bed. His hands promptly pushed up over Zlatan’s cock and then did barely anything as he got carried off with nipping at a particularly thick streak of chocolate on Zlatan’s neck.

His teeth sank in deep when Zlatan tried to lift himself, and then they wouldn’t let go till Zlatan tickled Sandro’s belly again. The other man immediately dropped, swearing, and stared irritably up, his strange nuzzling mood apparently over. Till Zlatan held up the bonbons he’d so painfully dug out of his bags, and _then_ \--it was disgusting how much Sandro’s eyes lighted up. They were almost as bad as whenever he was worried about Paolo, and at least then he didn’t follow up by having his mouth on Zlatan’s fingers before Zlatan could even—okay, not that wasn’t so bad. And actually, maybe Sandro would be a lot calmer if he stopped putting up with Paolo’s carefree act and shoved the man down more often. Anyway, Zlatan would enjoy watching.

But it still was a little wounding, the utterly blissful way Sandro looked when he ate those stupid chocolates. His lashes fluttered and he slumped bonelessly beneath Zlatan, and then this incredible long, vibrating moan came from his parted lips. And for God’s sake, Zlatan liked his sweets too and it was good chocolate, but…but…

Sandro opened his eyes a sliver, still chewing on the—so those must’ve been the caramel ones. He peered hazily up at Zlatan, then swung up his head and kissed Zlatan. Zlatan’s guess had been right and the caramel was all over Sandro’s tongue and teeth and then stringing its way into Zlatan’s mouth, tangling around their tongues, and okay, if it got Sandro like this, relaxed and playful and not remotely grim as death for once, Zlatan could like it. Could like it a lot.

He shifted his hips off the other man so he could get the clothes out of the way and Sandro closed his eyes, wrapping his arms tight around Zlatan’s shoulders and neck. He made more of those little noises, arching when Zlatan settled between his legs, and then the noises got deeper, rougher, but still as loose as before. Sandro kept on kissing Zlatan, slipping back just enough to suck at Zlatan’s lip or stroke his tongue over that whenever he had to breathe, even when the caramel was gone. Even when the chocolate was gone and it was just Zlatan’s mouth he had to be tasting, all stale and sour from the days at sea. He still was as eager about it, digging his fingers into Zlatan’s flesh whenever Zlatan had to lift his head, groaning in his throat and hooking his legs around Zlatan.

And he couldn’t do that with chocolate, Zlatan thought—couldn’t do anything like that, and just then Sandro dropped his hands to fist in the free-hanging folds of Zlatan’s shirt, and dropped his head so he could look up at Zlatan, eyes burning but clear all the way down. He wasn’t looking at any damn candy like that—Zlatan grinned, then laughed, and pulled the other man up towards him.

* * *

Paolo looked up from checking his watch and glanced around, then reached for his umbrella. Then he stopped, frowning. He turned back towards Sandro, who’d sank against the wall with a hand pressed over his stomach and an expression like somebody had just fed him half-distilled mash. “Sandro?”

“I—don’t feel well. I think it’s indigestion,” Sandro reluctantly muttered. He ducked his head and coughed into his hand, then raised his head to reveal a slightly more greenish complexion. “Damn. I’m sorry, Paolo, but I don’t think I can…”

Fabio looked skeptical. “Honestly, Sandro. We know you don’t like meeting with—”

“No, I really don’t feel well.” Sandro slowly pressed his lips together as he fought down a spasm in his throat. “If you want proof, I can give you some in a moment.”

Zlatan had been on the way in and in the middle of taking off his hat, but instead of doing that he tipped it over his face and swung his foot around behind Materazzi. Then he silently settled his weight onto it and began to slide the rest of himself that way, only to run into something that yelped. Everyone immediately looked his way.

After a wince, Zlatan dropped his hat and stepped back out to where he could see Paolo’s suspicious expression. He spared a glare for Gila, who had been spending entirely too much time around Gigi since he was staring quizzically back instead of apologizing. “I didn’t even want him to eat them, all right? Let alone _all_ of them.”

Paolo’s confusion briefly deepened. Then he abruptly straightened up and stared hard at Zlatan. His stare gradually shifted over to a guilty-looking Sandro. “Does this involve chocolate?”

Sandro made a little noncommittal, hopelessly telling hunch with his shoulders.

“Oh, for the love of…Sandro. Why do you keep doing this? You always get sick,” Paolo sighed. He waved around his hands a bit to fully express his exasperation. “Can’t you just—not eat so much at once?”

Sandro slumped further against the wall and looked at Paolo, all pale and stricken and weakly blinking. Zlatan rolled his eyes.

After a few seconds, Paolo sighed again and put his hand to his face. He kept it there for about a minute, then pulled it away and looked back up with a resigned expression. “All right, go back upstairs. Make sure you get in some sleep because I really can’t do without you in the morning…”

And Zlatan stared. “What? Are you serious? You’re actually falling for _that_?” He jabbed a finger at Sandro, who slowly turned to do his feeble eyelash-fluttering Zlatan’s way while everyone else looked as if Zlatan had just proposed killing the Pope. “It’s indigestion! I run around when I’m still bleeding!”

“Because you’re too stupid to listen to Dr. Sala,” Sandro muttered. He pushed off the wall, wobbled a bit, and then grabbed at his mouth and hurried off down the hall towards the nearest bathroom.

“He’s ill,” Paolo said, like he was telling a small child the earth was round and never mind how he knew, because he just did. Then he looked pained and rubbed at his face again. “Damn it—Marco, go call Andrea. We’ll have to take him instead.”

Zlatan grabbed Materazzi’s elbow, then pushed past the other man to get his coat off the rack. “Oh, let him sleep. I’ll come. Even though this is supposed to be my damn vacation…”

Paolo blinked a few times, then hid a grateful look as he nodded. “Fine, that’ll work. But please don’t try to strangle anybody.”

“I still say he was staring too much at your ass,” Zlatan muttered, stalking out the door. He snorted at Paolo’s choked sound, then turned his head slightly as the other man caught up to him. “Chocolate?”

“Well, we’ve all got something.” Shrugging, Paolo rustled about in his pockets for the car keys. He found them and tossed them into his palm, then began to pull on his overcoat. “I’m rather too fond of certain things myself.”

Zlatan went on till he’d gotten the car, then waited by it for Paolo to unlock the doors. He drummed his fingers on the engine block. “Yeah, like apples.”

Paolo stilled. Then he resumed opening the driver’s door, his teeth flashing just before the door blocked out his face. “You know, I was thinking it’s not too late to get fresh cider if you drive into the countryside. Perhaps when Sandro’s feeling up to it?”

“Sure,” Zlatan said after a moment. He swallowed hastily to clear his throat, hearing the others coming up behind him. Then he got in on the other side, starting to grin. It might be a little ridiculous, but it was _his_ ridiculous, and definitely nobody else had anything like it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally written as a thank-you to LJ user andolinn.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to LJ in 2007.
> 
> Kicked off by a quote from a sports-writing piece that called Zlatan "half-gangster, half-ballerina," and I believe some musings by LJ user applegnat influenced the ballerina running jokes here too.


End file.
